


Afterimage

by megs_bee



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Timeline Steve/Peggy, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Happy Ending, Infinity Gems, Infinity Stones Work Differently, M/M, Temporary Character Death, the snap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 57,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27675089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megs_bee/pseuds/megs_bee
Summary: What if the Infinity Stones don’t work the way Thanos thinks they do?The Snap happens, but doesn’t simply dust people--it removes them from the timeline entirely, forwards and backwards, leaving the survivors with no idea that anyone in their lives is missing, and living a different version of reality.2023 finds Steve still fighting for SHIELD, having spent his entire life feeling as though someone should be standing at his shoulder: the imaginary friend of his childhood, who he called Bucky.Natasha and Clint retired, but share dreams of teammates, missions, and families that never existed.Tony has the life he always dreamed of--a family in Pepper and Morgan, with Stark Industries leading the world in green energy and robotics--yet he can’t shake the feeling that the world outside his window should be a very different place.Because it turns out that being exposed to an Infinity Stone means the Snap doesn’t affect someone the same way, leaving them with afterimages of people and events that never happened...------------------------------------------------------------------Written for the (Not) Another Stucky Big Bang 2020!
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 38
Kudos: 99
Collections: Not Another Stucky Big Bang 2020





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my collaboration for the (Not) Another Stucky Big Bang 2020! I had the wonderful pleasure to receive art from the awesome [ubertrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ubertrash/pseuds/ubertrash) (Ao3) / [bicappytweets](https://twitter.com/bicappytweets) (Twitter) and I am so excited to finally share this fic! Art will be in the Part 2 chapter, so keep an eye out! Posting will stretch through the week, finishing Friday or Saturday. 
> 
> The idea for this fic grew out of a rant to my roommate about the things in Endgame that didn't make sense to me, and while I never thought I would find myself writing an Endgame fix-it, here we are! This project has taken over my writing life since April, and I'm super pleased with how it's turned out. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for reading!

# Prologue

Thanos growls in pain as Stormbreaker slices deeper into his chest, forcing him onto his knees in the dirt. He glares hatefully, voice weak. “You should have… you…” Then his face curls into a mocking sneer and his voice turns taunting. “You should have gone for the head.”

He raises his arm, the stones on the gauntlet glowing bright, and snaps his fingers. The stones blaze and wipe the world away in a flash of white.


	2. Part 1: A Priori

# Part 1: A Priori

## 2023

“That mission was boring as shit, Director, and don’t try to pretend it wasn’t,” Steve complains on his way up the stairs to his apartment door. Tucking his phone between his chin and shoulder, he shoves his free hand into his pocket searching for his keys. “I don’t even know why you brought me in on this one. All I did was sit around and listen to Henderson and Shamir bitch about the terrible food.”

Shoving open his door, he rolls his eyes at Coulson’s even tone explaining why they called Captain America himself out for what was basically two weeks of glorified babysitting. When there doesn’t seem to be any reason aside from a veiled, _it’s good for the junior agents to see you in the field sometimes_ , Steve interrupts. “It’s fine, Coulson, I get it. Just pick something more interesting next time or I’ll retire for real.”

Coulson’s voice never lost its bland edge, but Steve can still picture the man’s expression—also bland, but a blandness that hides hidden depths. “Seeing as you’ve already retired twice, neither of which lasted more than two years, you’ll forgive my skepticism.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve mutters, but it’s mostly good-natured. He likes Coulson, despite the way the man wears secrets like other men wear coats. “Don’t call me for anything less than an O-84 next time.”

Hanging up, he drops his shield and duffle bag onto the entryway floor and stretches. Groans as his spine pops. Bad enough he’d been stuck on this stakeout with baby agents for what felt like ages but really had only been sixteen days, he’d also been sleeping on the floor because their best vantage point was a half-finished apartment building with no furniture. Serum or no serum, Steve’s a hundred and five years old, which is too goddamn old to spend two and a half weeks on unfinished concrete. Even if he still looks like he’s barely hit his forties, his body is reminding him he’s been alive more than twice that long.

With another groan he kicks off his boots and forgoes the kitchen in favour of slumping down onto the couch in the living room. Possibly his favourite purchase of all the decades since he came out of the ice, the cushions sink beneath his weight and he feels his muscles begin to relax one by one.

“It’s not that I’m wishing for aliens or robots or some shit,” Steve mutters. “But more than two weeks of listening to baby agents sniping at each other is just too much. Coulson can keep the Cap-and-kids-hour to the training room from now on.” He rolls his head to the side, ready to continue sharing a litany of complaints with—

No one. 

Because there’s never anyone there, Steve forcibly reminds himself. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he turns his face back up to the ceiling.

“Fuck’s sake, Rogers, get it together.” You’d think that after nearly a century he’d have broken the habit, would have outgrown the feeling of always wanting to share the best and worst with someone who’s never been real, never really been beside him.

But no. Steve Rogers, Captain America, forty-three or a hundred and seven depending on how you count it. Still talking to his childhood imaginary friend.

He only made the mistake once of mentioning the habit—the instinct—to the SHIELD therapist. She’d latched onto it like it was a beacon of his instability, and brought it up nearly every session until he simply stopped going. Steve’s been well aware since about the age of twelve that his constant habit of wanting to talk to someone who doesn’t exist is weird as shit in anyone over the age of ten. He sure as hell didn’t need to be reminded about it every time he sat down in that beige office.

So he keeps it to himself like he’s done since his teens, and all through the war, and does his best not to give in to the urge in public to turn to talk to someone who isn’t actually standing beside him.

In private, though…

“Ah, Buck, if only you could see me now,” Steve sighs. He can picture the response, a laugh and a smirk, and a _You ain’t doing so bad, pal._

But in reality, the apartment is silent.

Sometimes he wants to believe that the empty feeling at his side is because of Peggy’s death seven years ago, after spending a lifetime—hers, at any rate—striding side-by-side through the world. But he knows that’s not it, that he’s felt like this his entire unnaturally long life. And that life with Peggy was _good_ , but he hasn’t felt like he’s had a real family in years, not since he lost the Commandos one by one to old age and then finally Peggy, stubborn to the last.

It makes him feel ungrateful, when he has too much time to get lost in his thoughts. The world is so much better than the one he remembers before the ice. The Depression and the War were hard on everyone, and when he made it to the twenty-first century to see that the world took those lessons to heart...it was more than he could’ve hoped for that day he stepped into the Vita-Ray chamber desperate to make a difference. 

Countries endeavoured to keep birth rates steady, no one lived in poverty anymore, technology was available for everyone, everywhere. It was better than anything Steve could have dreamed up as a child living in that tiny single-room brownstone with his Ma.

He tries to be grateful for everything he’s seen and accomplished over the decades he’s been alive, and for the future decades he’s likely to live.

But he’s always been lonely, with few friends given his tendency to get into fights. The imaginary friend of his youth is the only one who never left. 

Hauling himself up off the couch, he heads to the shower and then goes to bed, and hopes that tomorrow will be the day he stops feeling as though a part of himself is missing. 

***

The sunroom is quiet and warm, only a breeze carrying the sound of birdsong in through the open doors, paired with the quiet clicks and slides of metal on metal. It’s meditative, Natasha thinks. The familiar repetitive movements, the smooth slide of metal chambers and cloth against burnished barrels. It’s part of the reason for the routine; Sunday morning in the sunroom, hot black tea sweetened with cherry jam, and cleaning her handguns. Every week, without fail, even though she hasn’t actually used the guns in years.

The other part of the reason, well.

_You can take the spy out of the game…_

She slides the magazine back into the last gun and sets it aside next to the others. Her tea is still hot, and she sips slowly and lets her gaze rest on the view past the windows. An expanse of grassy field bounded by trees, golden in the afternoon sun. There’s even goddamn butterflies. It’s idyllic. Damn near perfect.

She’s never trusted perfection.

The thud of a door and clattering, scrambling sounds echoes from the front of the house, and Natasha’s lips quirk involuntarily, hidden against the rim of her mug. _Speaking of imperfection._

The stocky yellow mutt of a dog is first through the sunroom door, fringed tail wagging hard, followed closely by stocky blond Clint, short hair still sleep-messy even though he’s been up for hours. She gets a wet-nosed kiss to her knee from Lucky, and a kiss pressed to the crown of her head above her bun from Clint. He rounds the small table to slouch into the other seat while Lucky bee-lines out the open door and into the yard.

Clint steals her mug and a mouthful of tea before sliding it back across the tabletop. They both spend long minutes watching Lucky run around chasing butterflies and rolling in the grass. 

Clint’s voice breaks the silence, though his eyes stay trained on the dog. “Do you miss it?”

He doesn’t look at the guns on the table, but he doesn’t have to. They’ve known each other long enough that most of the time words are unnecessary. Still, words have their place, so she takes a moment to consider her own.

“No.” But she dips her head down, looks at the dregs of tea in her mug. “I don’t know.”

“It’s been nine years.” 

“It has.” She runs a finger down the barrel of her black Beretta, curious now. “You’ve never asked before.”

Clint picks up her teaspoon and starts spinning it through his fingers and flipping it into the air. Knife tricks but without the danger. “We joined SHIELD, found out SHIELD was dirty, cleaned house, and got out. We were working too hard figuring out how to be civilians back then to miss the secret agent days.”

She hums in agreement. Those early days had been...interesting. Civilians were so _soft_ , and so trusting. She still wasn’t used to it, not really, but had gotten good at putting on the act. “And now?”

Clint shrugs. “It’s been nine years—”

“And I still clean my guns every Sunday.”

He shrugs again. “Not like I gave up practicing my carnival schtick.” He picks up a loose bullet casing and a small screwdriver, and starts juggling them along with the spoon. Quick flicks of his wrists and hands, the rhythmic up and down.

“At least archery passes as a hobby.” Another learning curve during that first year out of SHIELD; civilians like hobbies and find it damn strange when you don’t lay claim to one.

Clint smirks and bounces his eyebrows at her between the items tossing through the air. “Not the way I do archery.”

Natasha laughs. “Conceited.”

He winks. “Honest.”

She watches Clint juggle for a while; after a few minutes, he starts doing tricks. Little extra flips and off-rhythm bounces. It’s amusing, and she knows that’s why he does it. For her. To try and get her to crack her mask with a smile.

But the smile doesn’t come today.

“I was never lonely, before,” she says. Clint keeps juggling, but holds her gaze. “I didn’t know enough about myself when I was in the Red Room to understand what ‘lonely’ felt like. It was on purpose, of course. Self-determination and individuality in a person makes for a poor soldier.”

Clint doesn’t speak, but his expression says he’s listening for as long as she wants to talk. She appreciates his silence. She doesn’t like talking about those parts of the past, and encouraging words will only do the opposite.

“And then I was never lonely because there was you.” She huffs a tiny laugh. “Once I learned how to trust the crazy American running around and bringing a bow and arrow to a gunfight, anyway. And you were enough. The two of us at SHIELD, shoulder to shoulder against the world. Then against Hydra-in-SHIELD.”

“Hawkeye and Black Widow. Agents extraordinaire,” Clint deadpanned. But she knows he’s secretly sincere, and a little bit smug about it. They’d been unstoppable in those days, and everyone in SHIELD knew it.

She’s never been terribly good at parsing out her deep internal feelings—too many years spent muting them, pushing them down—but something right now is driving her to try and put it into words.

“We never had a team, not a permanent one. We—you and I—never needed one.” She presses her lips together. Studies Clint’s familiar face. “I’m lonely now for a team we never had. I miss a team we never had.”

“But it’s more than wishing we’d spent time getting beers with the other agents after a mission,” Clint states.

“I miss them as though I knew them. I know their faces, almost. Their names, almost. Like looking through a dirty window, or trying to remember a dream.” Natasha holds her voice steady, and her gaze, but it’s hard. “I remember them like I remember dancing with the Bolshoi.”

Clint’s hands stop moving and he catches the bullet, the tool, the spoon. Serious now. “No one’s messed with your head, Tasha.”

She waves away his concern. She appreciates it, but it’s not what she’s worried about. “No, I know. It doesn’t feel the same as what the Red Room did to my mind. This is just...missing something that never was.”

“You know I understand,” Clint says, and she nods. “It’s hard to make connections when you are who and what we were. What we are.”

“Can’t take the spy out of the girl.”

“Or the boy, I guess,” Clint agrees. “These people you feel as though you miss, but never knew. Still the same ones you dreamed about sometimes?”

“I think so. A team we never had, missions we never went on.” A dream within a dream.

Clint turns to look out the window, scanning the treeline. “A wife I never married. Kids I never had.” Natasha nods, even though he isn’t facing her. They’re long past secrets, and she’s heard all this before. They both have. “You know I understand,” he says again.

_A team. Family_ , Natasha thinks to herself, and begins packing up her guns.

***

The deafening blare of AC/DC abruptly cuts off but Tony keeps his eyes on the glowing blue lines of the holotable where he’s flicking through a parts diagram with quick fingers. “What happened to my music, J?”

_“Apologies for the interruption, Sir. I’ve been asked to remind you that you are expected for brunch.”_

“Since when do I have brunch?” Tony says, distracted. He can see the tiny component he’s after, buried beneath a jumble of wires, and pokes his finger at the image to isolate it and pull it to the foreground. Then his thoughts catch up to what JARVIS said. “Wait, who’s having brunch? What time is it?”

_“It’s eleven-forty, Sir. I believe you will find brunch is served on the common room balcony, if you care to attend.”_

Shit. Tony saves the diagram and closes the file before jogging across the lab to the elevators. “Did I program you to be this sarcastic, J?”

_“I’m sure you must have, Sir.”_ JARVIS replied as the elevator doors closed and the car zipped soundlessly upwards.

“Remind me to do something about that,” Tony says, even though he knows—and J does, too—that the AI is exactly how Tony likes him to be.

_“I’ll do that, Sir,”_ JARVIS says. _“I hope you enjoy your meal.”_

Tony blinks hard against the brightness of the common room after the dim lights in the lab; it’s better for working with the holograms, but definitely hard on the eyes.

“Daddy!” 

Nearly four years, and Tony still can’t quite believe it. But the reality is here, his baby girl standing on the seat of her chair and shouting for him. He still gets that funny little pinch in his heart.

He sweeps across the common room floor and out onto the balcony, arms spread wide. “Good morning, little miss.” He presses a kiss to her forehead as he picks her up enough to lower her properly onto her chair. An identical kiss to Pepper’s cheek as he rounds the table to his own seat. “Pep.”

“Mommy said you forgot!”

Tony hides a smile behind an exaggerated frown and finger pointed at his sassy kid. “That’s slander, Miss Morgan, and I won’t stand for it. Except for how your mother’s always right and it’s a good thing JARVIS has my back. What’s the opposite of slander?”

“Speaking to truth,” Pepper responds with the arch of a perfect brow and a dry expression, but Tony can see the amusement in her eyes.

Morgan giggles uncontrollably and Tony can’t keep the smile from his face, picking up the mug of coffee in front of him and just settling into the warm feeling of being with his two best girls. It’s something he never thought he’d have. Howard wasn’t exactly a role model for good parenting, and for years Tony assumed he’d find Howard’s failings as a father in himself. Except then he almost died in that hole in the desert, and about a dozen times since between the arc reactor and being Iron Man. He found himself in Pepper when he finally smartened up enough to let her set him straight. And suddenly he’s here, with a perfect little family that is somehow everything he never knew he wanted.

Tony lets Morgan’s chatter wash over him while they eat. His kid is sassy and he loves it. Loves her. Loves Pepper.

He isn’t sure he deserves it, but damned if he’s going to let it get away.

A shadow passes over the balcony and Tony startles and jerks his eyes up to the sky above the Tower—but it’s just a cloud blocking the sun, the sky still smooth and blue all around. Not full of swirling black as though someone punched through all the blue with a bullet. Not like there was a hole in the world.

Tony squeezes his eyes shut, hard, for several seconds. It’s just a vision from his nightmares, one of many since he got out of that hole in the desert. He went to enough therapy—at Pepper’s insistence, and long after the time when he probably should have gone—to understand that dreams, nightmares, aren’t literal. It’s just the brain processing images and sensations. There wasn’t a giant swirling maelstrom in the sky made of blue light surrounding blackness; but there was a glowing arc reactor in his chest keeping him alive. There wasn’t a portal to some other piece of space, raining destruction down on New York; but there was Jericho, and a lifetime of Stark missiles destroying people and places around the world.

“Daddy, what’s wrong?” Morgan climbs into Tony’s lap as he opens his eyes again. 

“Nothing’s wrong, little miss,” Tony says, ruffling her hair. “Just got the sun in my eyes. Guess I should’ve grabbed my shades on the way out of the lab. Should’ve known a sunny day and my two sunny girls would be too much for me.” Morgan giggles and settles comfortably against Tony’s chest. 

Pepper catches his eye from across the table and tips her head slightly, inquiring. She’s heard the nightmares up close and personal, knows what it looks like when Tony drifts. But he’s fine, or as fine as he ever is, so he nods back.

He looks out across Manhattan at the rest of the New York skyline, to remind himself of what’s real. Beautiful, high-tech and energy efficient buildings—many of them powered by miniature arc reactor tech, because Tony and Stark Industries had made that available as soon as he was sure it would be safe and viable long-term. Greenspace everywhere, parks and boulevards and rooftops. The quiet drone of traffic moving smoothly through the streets. The air was even clear enough today to see nearly to Jersey.

But when he closes his eyes, or blinks too fast, or lets his thoughts wander unfocused, he keeps expecting to see the opposite of all that. Crowded streets full of millions of pedestrians and cars. Buildings reduced to rubble and being rebuilt across the city. 

And for a second, each time it happens, he’s not sure which is real.


	3. Part 2: Afterimage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The amazing art piece from bicappy is here! <3

# Part 2: Afterimage

## 1928

“Yer’ jus’ a dirty mick bastard!” A booted foot thuds into the side of Steve’s ribs. He coughs as he tries to roll away and scramble back to his feet. Another sneering voice follows the clatter of a tin can as it bounces off Steve’s shin. “Should’a stayed outta my face, just fucking stay down, Rogers!”

Steve stumbles a bit as he gets his feet under him and stands. He can feel the trickle of something against his lip; sure enough, when he wipes his hand across his face he sees a smear of blood on his fingers.

But he refuses to let Ollie and his arsehole friends get the better of him, and scowls back at them. “I can do this all day.”

He can’t, of course; it’s probably not five minutes before Steve’s left groaning on the sidewalk while Ollie and the other boys laugh and jeer as they walk away. How kids who’re so mean manage to have friends, Steve has no idea, but he supposes that they are all equal amounts of mean so it must balance out. Except he’s seen Ollie beat on his so-called friends, too, and the other boys stick around, so it must just be Steve who is too difficult to get to have friends.

He could imagine what’d be like, though, to have a friend. He could almost picture it: another boy running up in the middle of Ollie kicking and kicking him right back. _Not so tough up against someone your own size, eh?_

Windblown brown curls and pewter-grey eyes, a laughing face and an outstretched hand. _You’re Steve Rogers, right? Seen you around the neighbourhood._

And Steve would say… Well, he’d probably get mad if some other kid just butted in like that. _I don’t need your help. I had ‘im on the ropes._

_Sure, pal,_ Steve imagines the other boy saying, disbelieving but not in a mean way. Not like he thinks Steve couldn’t take care of himself. _M’name’s Bucky Barnes. Want some Red Vines?_

But of course no friend suddenly appears, no smiling boy with licorice candy. No matter how real Bucky seems when Steve imagines him, how much it feels like Bucky should be standing beside him. Steve wipes his hand beneath his nose—not bleeding anymore, that’s good—and winces as he prods at his split lip. He drags himself up and goes home. His Ma isn’t back from her shift at the hospital yet, so Steve has time to clean himself up before she sees him.

The whole time he’s changing clothes and scrubbing blood off his face, he imagines what it would be like if his imagined friend was there with him. _Come on, Stevie, take it easy on your poor face, you’re gonna scrub the skin right off._

“Ma’s a nurse, I know how to clean my scrapes right,” Steve mumbles. “Done it enough times, too.”

_That’s ‘cause you’re too dumb to run away from a fight._ But Steve imagines Bucky would smile as he says it, a joke between them.

“Steven Grant! What happened to your face?”

Steve winces at his Ma’s voice. He’d been so lost in thought, playing out an imaginary conversation with Bucky, that he hadn’t heard the sound of the door opening. 

“I’m fine, Ma. ‘S nothing,” Steve muttered, trying to turn away. His Ma doesn’t let him get away with it, though. Strong, work-rough hands catch his chin and tilt his face into the light, and blue eyes that match Steve’s own examine his bruised nose and swollen lip. 

“Oh, Steven,” she sighs, and strokes a hand over his hair. “Fighting again?”

Steve shrugs. “They were pickin’ on William Donegan, and it ain’t right. He’s just little.”

She presses her lips together for a moment, but then softens and bends to press a kiss to Steve’s forehead. “Ah, my kind boy.” Straightening up, she urges Steve toward the kitchen. “Come help with dinner.”

While peeling potatoes next to his Ma, Steve scowls at the knife. “I don’t understand how people like them seem to have friends when they are so mean all the time, even to each other. If I had a real friend, I’d never be mean like that to him.”

His Ma gives him an indulgent smile. “You’re a wonderful boy, Steven. I’m sure you’ll find a wonderful friend.”

Steve isn’t sure he believes his Ma—she has to say stuff like that, after all, and if he was going to have friends, shouldn’t it have happened at least once by now?—but he doesn’t argue. But he pictures this Bucky again, and says quietly, “I know just what he should be like.”

“And how’s that?”

Steve struggles with the knife against a tough spot on the potato in his hands. “He’d be funny, and nice, and smile all the time, and he’d help when the other boys are being mean to people, and he’d want to be my friend just because.” He can’t help that his voice is sad, but thankfully his Ma doesn’t comment on it.

“Sounds lovely, my darling,” she says, running a hand over Steve’s hair. 

By the time Steve’s finished dinner and lying in bed that night, he’s played out a dozen conversations and activities with the friend he imagined that afternoon. When he falls asleep, he dreams of himself and Bucky running through the streets of Brooklyn, playing stickball and kick-the-can. 

And if, over the years, Steve never finds a friend as good in real life as Bucky Barnes is in his thoughts and dreams, well. At least he always had the best friend of his imagination, figuratively speaking, right there by his side.

***

## 1939

Steve shoves at the window sash until the wood finally unsticks and slides upwards. Thick humidity pours in, but it’s still better than the stuffy air in the single room he’s lived in since his Ma passed on a few years back. The tenement building isn’t terrible, a brownstone facade and plaster lathe interior walls, but it’s still crowded with poor airflow. Too cold in winter, too hot in summer.

Climbing out onto the fire escape, Steve flaps the neck of his shirt to try and cool down. The heat was suffocating, the air smelling of the sewers and sweaty crowds. He’d come near to fainting on the walk back from dropping off this week’s advertising drawings at the small borough newspaper. At least the sun has passed below the roof of the building across the street, so Steve’s perch is in late afternoon shadow.

Reaching back to the window, he grabs his sketchbook and tin of charcoal off the sill. He doesn’t have to start the next batch of advertisements quite yet, but despite the heat his fingers itch to draw. His room is only on the third floor, which leaves him at a good distance for people-watching without being so close anyone will catch him staring too intently. 

He starts an aimless sketch of a tall man down on the corner, dressed up like he’s got somewhere to be. Steve’s mind gets lost in building the shape of the sketched figure, drifting in his thoughts as he fills in the details. Maybe the guy’s going out to the pictures, or on a date to go dancing with one of the neighbourhood gals. The suit he’s got on is nice but not fancy, so he might be heading to church but probably not a wedding.

Steve focuses on the details of the eyes, dark lashes and light irises. Adds a shadow defining cheekbones and a strong clean-shaven jawline. When his hand cramps a little he pulls back and takes a look at the whole of the page.

_Bucky._

He sighs to himself, unsurprised. More than half of Steve’s sketches end up being some version of his imagined friend, ever since Steve started drawing seriously at ten years old. He’d never been much good with colours—the other kids never hesitated to tell him that he was wrong, and they didn’t do it kindly—but graphite and charcoal sketching didn’t have that detriment. 

He sometimes thinks that the entire motivation for his younger self learning to draw was because he wanted to see the face of his friend, wanted to be able to show his Ma rather than just describing Bucky to her. He must have drawn things before then; most children do. Yet the _drive_ to draw, to improve until he could create the images in his head clearly on paper—that didn’t come until after he started imagining Bucky.

Now, more than a decade past the point of drawing stick figures and shapeless blobs, Steve’s got a pile of sketchbooks as high as his knee and locked safely inside his Ma’s old and battered hope chest—more than one of which would get him into a lot of trouble should someone come across them. Too many drawings of the same guy—the same face, same hands, same eyes, and lips, and jawline. More than a few of them risque enough to qualify for the blue pictures and then some, drawn during late nights and early mornings when Steve woke from rather... _detailed_ dreams.

It wouldn’t matter if he insisted that the guy in the sketches wasn’t real; hell, that’d probably just make things worse, and Steve would be labelled a madman as well as a pervert before being thrown out into the streets—if he was lucky.

Hell, maybe he is a madman. Steve sighs and flips to a blank page. Most children outgrow their imagination—the part of it that creates friends, and has conversations with them, and pretends to go on adventures around Brooklyn with them, anyway. Move on to taking dames dancing, and looking for work, or if they were lucky and had the money maybe even going to one of the colleges.

But Steve never did outgrow thoughts of his childhood imaginary friend. And he isn’t actually mad, he knows that much; but he also knows it’s not all that normal to still have the habit of wanting to talk to someone who isn’t there. Bucky was his constant companion through a lonely childhood, and even well after most gave up on childish fancies, Bucky was still there in the back of Steve’s mind. Steve doesn’t talk out loud much anymore, and not nearly as often as when he was younger. But sometimes, Steve still feels the urge to turn to his right and talk to someone—Bucky—beside him, even while he knows that Bucky’s not standing there.

The sketchbooks hold the history of Steve’s solo friendship, with the earliest ones going all the way back to when he first learned to draw. But for someone that Steve dreamed up as a child, Bucky never stayed a child; as Steve grew older, the Bucky he imagined was older, too. Always the same age as Steve, even now that he’s in his twenties.

No longer gap-toothed and high-voiced, the image of Bucky in Steve’s head these days is all dark hair and charming smiles, broad shoulders and strong hands. Even now, as his thoughts drift, he can picture Bucky’s lean form stretched out along the other end of the fire escape, cigarette hanging from calloused fingers. Can almost hear that sardonic laugh. _Nothing quite like summer in Brooklyn, eh Steve?_

This version of Bucky fills the sketchbook page, cigarette and all. Steve sighs, and shades in a little more of the sparkle in Bucky’s eyes.

***

## 1943

“You’re late.”

Steve smiles at the sound of that familiar posh British voice. He turns away from watching Colonel Phillips stride off—Steve’s honestly surprised he’s not getting court-martialed, though no doubt once the gratitude wears off he’ll still get an earful about disobeying orders—to see Peggy standing next to him, red lips curled in a sharp smile that doesn’t hide the relief in her eyes.

Steve laughs, a little self-conscious as always when under Peggy’s knowing brown gaze. Digging into one of the pouches on his belt, he pulls out the transponder she’d given him—shattered with a giant bullet hole. “I couldn’t call my ride.”

Peggy arches her brow, expression both fond and exasperated. Since that’s usually the expression she has when dealing with him, Steve’s reassured that he hasn’t made her too angry or gotten her into trouble with his antics. And he’s glad for it, because he’s realizing here and now, after the insanity of the last few weeks storming a Hydra base and marching back through the European forest, that the respect and esteem he has toward her is maybe something a bit more than that.

_Let’s hear it for Captain America!_ For a moment Steve imagines Bucky’s voice, and yeah if Bucky were real and here right now he’d probably be equal parts proud and mad as a hornet at what Steve just did. He doesn’t know why he’s still imagining his friend, even in the midst of a war halfway around the world. It doesn’t make sense, when everything since that night at the Stark Expo where he encountered Erskine has been so far removed from his life in Brooklyn. Weeks at Basic training, getting the serum and becoming a supersoldier. Spending months travelling the country like a dancing monkey. Ending up on the Western Front and leading a rescue mission to Azzano to rescue men that everyone else had planned to leave for dead.

It’s a world away—literally—from anything Steve’s experienced before. Places he’s never been, never seen, even in books or the pictures. No idea what he was really walking into when he reached the War. So Steve isn’t sure why he would be able to picture Bucky here, now, as clearly as he ever did in the familiar streets of Brooklyn.

Except when Steve thinks about it, he realizes with an odd kind of disbelief that it’s been months since he really imagined Bucky or felt the urge to speak out loud as though Bucky was there. It might even have been since before this all started, all the way back to the Stark Expo when he’d imagined Bucky at his side marvelling at all the futuristic technology on display.

He’s been so busy the past year, days and weeks of travelling and doing shows and shaking hands, and now suddenly in the midst of the war. He sure as shit hadn’t had much time for drawing or just being alone with his thoughts. 

Ever since the raid on Azzano, though, he’s had multiple moments where he falls back into old habits. Picturing the horror of what it would have been like to find Bucky in that base, strapped to a table and barely conscious. Wanting to turn and talk to Bucky at his side, especially during the long march back to basecamp. Even now, imagining Bucky leading the crowd of soldiers to cheer, but probably getting ready to read Steve the riot act as soon as they’re alone.

But for what he thinks is the first time in his life, he tries to ignore the errant thoughts. Tries not to picture Bucky standing beside him. Instead he focuses on Peggy. He owes her a debrief report, and then if he’s lucky, they will have a few minutes of privacy to talk for real.

The debrief goes better than Steve expected, though to be fair the bar was fairly low. Phillips gives him a very specific dressing down on the subject of following orders, but it’s slightly undermined by the muttered surety that, _I’m sure you’re gonna do whatever the hell you want, anyway_. And Steve can’t disagree, because he would do the same again in a heartbeat when it’s what he knows is right.

The fact that he can provide the locations of more than half a dozen Hydra bases goes a long way toward smoothing things over.

He and Peggy find that private moment, too, and sneak a handful of frantic kisses while hidden in a space between overlapping corners of several tents. 

“When we had reports of that explosion, that the base at Azzano was destroyed…” she says, concern colouring her voice and expression. She runs one hand down his forearm, as though to reassure herself that he’s real. “And then I didn’t hear from you, for _weeks_? I was quite certain I’d sent you to your death.”

“It was a self-destruct, I think,” Steve says. “But I was well out of there by the time the detonations started.” And if he’s fudging the timeline a little there, well. It ended well enough.

“Well thank god for that,” Peggy sighs. She leans her forehead against his chest for a moment before pulling back to look up at him again. “I’m terribly glad you made it back in one piece, you know.”

“So am I,” Steve replies. “I didn’t want to bring it up in front of the brass, but are you facing disciplinary action for helping me?”

Peggy shook her head. “Oh, Phillips wanted my head on a platter for a fair while, but he hadn’t time to report back to the higher-ups. Given that you’ve returned in a stunning show of victory, I daresay he’ll continue to keep it to himself.”

“Good,” Steve says. One less thing to worry about, at least for today.

“All right, enough of this for now,” she says as she drops her arms and steps back from their embrace. Her tone is brisk, but she’s smiling. “We’d best get you to medical so they can fuss over you. If you’re lucky, they’ll finish in time for you to make it to the mess for dinner.”

“They’d better,” Steve mutters as he steps out from between the tents and heads in the direction of the medical station, Peggy at his side. “The serum keeps me going, but I am damn hungry.”

It’s dark out by the time Steve’s cleared by the doctors, catches the very end of dinner in the mess hall, and makes it back to his tent. Stripped to his skivvies and stretched out on the cot, Steve tries to shut his eyes and sleep. His mind’s too active, though, and now that there’s nothing left to distract him his thoughts drift to Bucky again. 

It’s the Bucky he’d imagined during the march, injured and too pale and haggard. Unsmiling. Steve shies away from the image that has persisted since halfway through storming the Azzano base, the imagined horror of finding Bucky hurt and alone in a dark room.

Turning his thoughts away from those images leads him to the question of, _Why now?_ He’s had several months of nothing, and suddenly his mind is supplying Bucky there beside him again, but a version of Bucky that Steve would never have wanted to see in real life.

But maybe it makes sense. Steve hasn’t been in Europe that long, not compared to so many of the other soldiers, but even so he’s already seen so much fighting and blood and death. Maybe it’s not such a stretch that his imagination would show him Bucky’s face on the injured and emaciated body of a soldier suffering under the weight of this war. The embodiment of Steve’s own worst fears; that if Bucky were here he might be dying or dead. That Steve might be dying or dead...

He stares into the dim light of the tent, and Bucky is there, stretched out on the opposite bunk looking tired and relieved and a little bit pissed. _Thought I told you not to do anything stupid._

“Yeah, well, I’ve never been one to listen to good advice,” Steve whispers. 

_Punk._

“Jerk.” 

Somehow it’s all too much. Steve closes his eyes, rolls away from the familiar face that he still longs to be with him, to be real, even if it means Bucky being in pain. So selfish.

He does his best to force his thoughts to blankness and sleep.

***

## 1945

“Give me your coordinates. I’ll find you a safe landing site.”

“There’s not going to be a safe landing, but I can try and force it down. Right now I’m in the middle of nowhere. If I wait any longer, a lot of people are going to die. Peggy?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m gonna need a raincheck on that dance.”

“All right. A week, next Saturday, at the Stork Club. Eight o’clock on the dot, don’t you dare be late.”

“You know, I still don’t know how to dance.”  
“I’ll show you how. Just be there.”

“We’ll have the band play something slow. I’d hate to st—”

“Steve? ...Steve?”

***

The cold wakes him. Steve groans, trying to sit up but feels something pinning his arms, hard and icy. Grunting against the pain radiating through his body, he shifts until he gets some leverage to shove upwards with his shoulders. Strains and cries out through gritted teeth until he feels the weight shift enough for him to crawl out from beneath. 

He lays there panting, waiting for the pain to subside. Disoriented, he rolls over until he can look around to try and get his bearings. He’s still in the cockpit of the Valkyrie, caught between a twisted beam and the remains of the pilot’s chair and huge spears of ice, all of it crushed together against the back wall.

Pain lances through his leg and up his back when he tries to get free of the tangled metal. He can practically feel bones and muscle knitting back together as the serum works to repair the damage. Steve’s surprised he’s even alive, serum or no serum. 

Thankfully, there’s no sign of other Hydra soldiers. No sign of Red Skull, either, though Steve figures a portal, or whatever that was, is probably pretty tough to come back from. The cube is gone, too, so that’s good. But Steve can see that the hole it burned through the floor is now gushing with water, which is definitely not good.

A hard jolt throws Steve off his feet as the nose of the plane sinks. Icy water begins rushing in over the shattered window of the cockpit.

For a while he’s not sure he can get back to his feet. He’s concerned about the water rushing in but it all starts to feel distant and muted, like remembering a dream. His thoughts drift to Bucky, but not the way they used to. Instead, it’s the realization that after two years of storming Hydra bases across the face of Europe and imagining Bucky at his side through all of it—always so clear as if Bucky was almost real, except for the fact that it’s always, always only Steve who sees him, hears him, talks to him in whispers when no one else is around—that the last months he hasn’t seen Bucky at all, in a way that feels more permanent than any other time before.

_Am I going to die without seeing him again?_

Another shuddering groan of metal against ice pulls Steve from his drifting thoughts. Shit, he’s gotta get out of here before he ends up underwater. He’s still trapped behind a pile of twisted metal and other detritus from the damaged cockpit, and it’s cold, so cold with the arctic air rushing in through every hole and crack that wasn’t already filling with water. Bitter cold, unlike anything Steve’s ever felt before, freezing the air in his lungs and the blood on his skin. 

Slowly, painfully, he wrestles his way out of the mess, feeling broken bones grind beneath his skin, muscle tearing even as the serum tries to heal. He searches the rubble until he finds the shield, and staggers to the nearest wall. Summoning as much strength as he can, he swings the shield edge-on at the seam around a door. He loses track of how long it takes, but he eventually breaks through enough of the metal to shove the door open and get out of the cockpit. The water is already past his knees. 

He makes it through two more walls, doing his best to keep moving up the incline. Finally, barely able to stand, he finds an exterior wall torn open and climbs out. He falls out of the opening into snow and ice, and lays groaning and panting from the pain. Another crack of ice and the plane sinks a few feet further, spurring him to stagger to his feet and drag himself a safe distance away. 

He can’t go far, or they’ll never find him, but he can’t stay too close and risk falling through the broken ice around the plane. They have the coordinates; at least, he hopes it came through on the radio. He just has to stay alive until they find him.

Steve collapses into the snow, can only hope that he got far enough away that he won’t get caught in shattered ice and rushing water when the plane finally crunches its way through to sink beneath the ocean. There’s nothing but pain running through his body now; even the buzz of the serum’s healing isn’t noticeable anymore. Maybe it finally ran out, keeping him alive long enough to get out of the plane but no match in the end for the blistering, silent cold.

The thin air feels thick as water in his lungs. Hallucinating or dreaming, he isn’t sure. The sky above him is hazy, tinted gold with the fading edge of sunset low on the horizon. Behind his mind’s eye is darkness, blue-black and shadowed, like being beneath the ocean, like looking through the hole in space that devoured the Red Skull. Blue like the Tesseract, searingly bright, a blue flame tearing a hole in reality, destruction raining down on a familiar yet unrecognizable city.

His mind drifts, and he imagines—wishes—that he sees Bucky. That if this is the end, he isn’t alone. If Bucky were real, he would lean close, would tell Steve that everything would be okay. Steve would believe him, because if Bucky is the one saying it, then maybe it’s true. Would gladly let himself go if Bucky’s face would be the last thing he sees.

He tries to rise one last time, but can’t. Tries to speak, can barely get his frozen lips to move. _I’m sorry, Bucky._

Peace pulls at him, and he no longer feels the cold. Doesn’t want to close his eyes. It feels like giving up. Forces his eyes open, his lips to part. “Rogers, Captain Steven Grant.” Repeats it, name, rank and serial number, again and again. 

But there is no one to hear him.

Art by [bicappy](https://twitter.com/bicappytweets).

***

## 1979

“Rest, Tony,” Jarvis states, pointedly tucking the covers tightly around Tony where he lays in a pile of pillows and comforters. “I know you’re bored, but if you want to return to the summer program, you must stay put and rest. With any luck you’ll be right as rain in the morning.” 

“But I don’t feel _that_ bad, Jarvis,” Tony argues. It’s not entirely true. He definitely feels buzzy and cold and sweaty, but he’s so _bored_. It’s not specifically that he wants to go back to the science program, but at least when he’s there he can see his friends. 

“You still have a fever, which means staying homel.” Jarvis gives Tony a stern look, the one with the very straight eyebrows, so Tony knows he’s serious.

“Fine,” he mutters, and slumps deeper into the bed.

Jarvis smiles kindly, giving the comforter one last adjustment before leaving the room. “Try to sleep, Tony. If nothing else, it will make the time pass more quickly.” 

Alone in his room Tony does try to sleep, but it’s no good. He really does feel awful, but his thoughts are still jumping around. The only way to deal with that is to work on something, so he grabs the little pile of electronics and mechanical parts from his desk. He’s not sure yet what it’s going to be, but he thinks maybe he can make it into something that can move itself around in a pattern…

It’s enough to occupy his thoughts for a while, but eventually Tony isn’t sure what to do next and needs more parts from his Dad’s workshop. He gets up and slips out of his room, one eye out for Jarvis, and heads to Howard’s workshop.

He’s got a small box full of parts and tools when he hears voices out in the hall, both his Dad’s voice and someone else both familiar and unfamiliar. Curious, because it’s not often these days that his Dad has people over to the mansion, Tony waits inside the workshop until they pass in the hall. Slipping out, he follows the sound of their conversation to the study on the second floor. 

The door isn’t shut all the way, so Tony peeks through the crack. He can see a dark-haired woman standing near the window, while his Dad and the back of a tall blond man are near the desk flipping through folders.

“His name is Alexander Pierce,” Peggy is saying. “He’s young, but he’s making a name for himself. He could make a good addition to SHIELD.”

Howard makes a dismissive noise. “A politician, though? I trust those guys about as far as I could throw one.”

“Just because _you_ hate playing the diplomacy game, Howard,” Peggy says sarcastically. “Truthfully, we could use a few more people who know how to play that game. We’re none of us three terribly diplomatic.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Howard mutters.

The blond man turns away from the desk. His voice is deep with laughter. “I have been told I can’t punch my way out of everything.”

“Most notably by your better half,” Howard’s tone is teasing now, in a way that Tony rarely hears directed towards himself. Who are these people who can get his dad to tease and laugh? He thinks he recognizes the woman from old photos of his father during the War. The man’s voice sounds familiar, too, but Tony isn’t sure.

Then the man turns far enough that Tony can see his face, and Tony feels a rush of confusion so strong that he can’t help making a gasping noise in his surprise, and drops the soldering iron he’d been holding. He looks at the blond man, tall as a giant, with bright blue eyes, and knows that the man he’s looking at is dead. 

Tony realizes they heard him when all three adults look towards the door. He can’t tear his eyes away from the blond man, frozen in the wake of his brain’s insistence that this man shouldn’t be here, at war with the evidence in front of his eyes.

“Tony!” his dad barks, gesturing impatiently for Tony to come closer. “Don’t just stand there. If you’re going to lurk around in the hall then get in here and say hello.”

The woman smiles warmly, and her smooth British accent sounds familiar now. “Hullo, Tony. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen you, but you were quite young so you may not remember.”

Tony manages to push the door open with one shaking hand, but can’t make himself step more than a foot inside the room. He doesn’t want to make his dad angry, and he means to say hello, he really does. But he can’t stop staring at the blond man who is also giving him a friendly smile—for some reason he thinks maybe he should know who this is, but he’s sure the man _shouldn’t be here_ —and what comes out when Tony opens his mouth is, “You’re dead… How are you here?”

All three adults look surprised, and his dad looks like he’s about to get mad in a minute, but it’s the blond man whose expression Tony can’t look away from. Confusion mars the blue eyes as they hold Tony’s, and now that Tony’s opened his mouth it’s like he can’t stop. “Are you a ghost? Are you immortal? How did you get here, how did you get out?” Even as he says them, the words make no sense, coming from the same part of his mind telling him this man can’t be real. 

The guy has gone pale, though, and in a rough whisper asks, “What do you mean?”

Tony’s voice is shaking now, from fear and something else, but the words keep spilling past his lips. “You died in the plane, under the ice, you shouldn’t be here! I don’t know why, I just...I…”

“Tony? How—?” He takes a step toward Tony, and it’s too much. Tony backs away, shaking his head violently, then turns and bolts from the room. He hears his dad shout his name, but ignores it and keeps running through the house until he’s somehow out in the garage and huddles down underneath the workbench surrounded by cars and the smell of motor oil.

He’s not crying, not quite, but his breath is too fast and his face feels hot. His whole body feels cold and shaky, and he pulls up his knees and hides his face beneath his folded arms. He’s not sure how long he sits there when he hears the door to the garage open and shut. Footsteps tap across the concrete.

“Anthony Edward Stark, I thought I told you to stay in bed,” Jarvis reprimands as he crouches in front of the workbench until he can see Tony. His voice gentles when he gets a good look at Tony. “Come along, out from under there and back to your room.”

Tony sniffles hard, and relaxes his hold on his knees so he can crawl from beneath the workbench. He takes Jarvis’ outstretched hand to help him stand, but leans into Jarvis’ side, clenching both hands tight into the material of his sleeve and sniffling against his waistcoat. 

“Tony?” Jarvis pats him on the back, then presses the back of his hand to Tony’s forehead. “Goodness, your fever’s gone back up. It’s bed for you, young man, let’s go.” Tony lets himself be guided back into the house and up to his room. Jarvis’ practical directions and unflappable attitude help bring Tony back to a sense of normal, and by the time he’s settled under the comforter the cold shakiness has mostly gone away. His mind still whirls, though, with questions and the strange feeling that something is wrong.

Jarvis starts to leave, but Tony calls him back. And Jarvis must see something of Tony’s upset, because he asks, “What’s got you all worked up?”

“There were two people in Dad’s office. But one of them…” Tony hesitates, but Jarvis waits patiently. “The man, he shouldn’t be here. He’s dead, but he’s not? It doesn’t feel right. But he’s here, he’s real?” He trails off. It sounds silly, and he can’t think of any other way to say it. 

Jarvis looks concerned, and presses his hand to Tony’s forehead again. “And that’s what’s gotten you all upset?”

Tony nods. His head aches, and he squishes down into his pillow. “Is he a ghost?”

Jarvis smiles a little at that. “No, he’s not a ghost. I can assure you, Captain Rogers is very real. I’ve known him for quite a long time now, as he’s been a friend of your father’s since the War, just as Margaret Carter has been.” Jarvis laughs. “We all had quite a few adventures, in fact, back in the years after the War. Became quite good friends, as often happens in the face of extraordinary circumstances.”

“Will you tell me sometime?” Tony asks. Maybe if he knows more about these people, he won’t feel so confused. 

“Another time,” Jarvis says. “For now you ought to go to sleep.”

“Okay,” Tony sighs. He is tired, though, and the shivery fever feeling has come back. He pulls the comforter closer around his shoulders. Just before Jarvis leaves the room, Tony says quietly, “Thank you, Jarvis.”

“You’re welcome. Sleep well.”

Tony turns on his side and closes his eyes. He sleeps, and his fever dreams are about oceans of ice and deserts of sand, and a sky swirling with bright, unnatural blue.

He remembers neither the meeting nor the dreams when he wakes.

***

Steve stares at the empty doorway where Howard’s son just ran away. He’s shaken. Unsettled.

_What just happened?_

He has no idea why Howard’s son would ask those questions in that way, why he would say he thought Steve was dead. No idea how Tony knew so much about the plane crash and the ice, but not the fact that Steve was found and rescued more than twenty-seven years ago.

But it’s more than that. Steve has nightmares of being trapped in the ice, frozen in the snow, of drowning and waking only to drown again in ways that don’t match his memories of that day, though he knows they were all fates he only narrowly avoided. It’s been more than two decades, and he still dreams of suffocating beneath the ice.

But how would Tony know any of that? He supposes that Howard may have told stories about the time spent searching for Steve—and finding him, thank god. But Howard’s always been oddly reticent to speak of those years with people other than Steve and Peggy, and it didn’t explain the certainty in Tony’s young voice when he said that Steve should be dead. 

“He’s not usually so shy, or…” Howard waves his hand vaguely in the direction of the doorway. “Whatever that was. He definitely isn’t usually that strange, though he does take after yours truly with that habit of saying whatever he’s thinking.” 

Before Steve can think of what to say, Jarvis comes in with a full tea on a tray. He winks at Peggy as he sets it down with a flourish. “Margaret Carter. It’s always a pleasure making proper tea for someone who appreciates it.” 

Peggy smiles brightly and greets him with a hug. “It’s lovely to see you again, Jarvis. It’s been far too long.”

“Yes, well, I’m not the one who’s been gallivanting around the world for the last few years,” Jarvis replies. He begins pouring tea with efficient movements. 

“Did you see Tony a moment ago? Is he all right?” Peggy asks.

“Yes, I believe so,” Jarvis replies. “Something about Captain Rogers seems to have startled him, but he’s been ill with a fever the last two days, so I imagine he was merely confused.”

Steve scrubs a hand through his hair in agitation. “How did he know about the plane, and the ice?” Unfortunately, Jarvis only shakes his head.

“He’s probably heard me talking about it at one point or another,” Howard waves dismissively. “Now, back to these...” He starts shuffling through the files again.

Steve only half listens to Howard’s voice as his thoughts drift. He remembers the cold, the ice, after crashing the plane. But he didn’t drown, he climbed out of Valkyrie and was buried in snow. He didn’t die; Peggy and Howard found him. Granted it took them five years, but the serum preserved him, and they dug him out of the snow, and he woke up. He lived. 

But Tony, Howard’s son who Steve hasn’t seen since the boy was a toddler, just described every one of Steve’s nightmares.

He wishes he could talk to Bucky like he used to do back before the War, but Bucky’s presence in Steve’s mind hasn’t been the same since the very first dream of ice and fear, the one where Bucky was fighting at his side, then fell from a frozen mountainside. A horrifying nightmare of Bucky dying, and it was as though it happened for real. Since that moment, Steve hasn’t seen his imaginary friend lounging in the corner of his eye, hasn’t heard his voice in answer to words spoken aloud, quietly, privately. For so many years he wondered why the imaginary interactions existed, why they continued so far into adulthood, but now that they are gone, Steve mourns the loss. Mourning for the loss of someone who never existed in the first place.

And even now Steve talks to Bucky, out of a lifetime of habit and a strange hope that one day his friend will reappear.

“—ve? Steve?” Peggy’s voice breaks through his distraction. “Are you all right?”

“Ah, yeah, sorry Peg. Just lost in thought,” Steve says. She looks at him questioningly; she knows him well enough by now to know when he’s prevaricating. But all he says is, “I’m fine.”

She nods crisply, but gives him a pointed look that quite clearly indicates they will be talking about this later. 

They finish the rest of their meeting with Howard without incident. Once they’re home, though, Peggy stops him from heading to the kitchen and instead steers him into the living room and down onto the couch. Perching on the coffee table in front of him, she picks up both his hands and presses them tight between her own.

“Are you all right, Steve? And don’t merely say you’re fine; I recognized that look on your face.” She holds his gaze, straightforward as always. “I know what you look like when your thoughts stray to your nightmares.”

“It wasn’t just the nightmares,” Steve admits. He stares hard at their clasped hands, trying to put his feelings into words. But nothing he can think of quite encapsulates what he felt hearing Tony’s words. Or rather, almost nothing. “Do you remember when I told you about Bucky?” 

Peggy’s eyebrow arches in surprise. It’s fair enough; he hasn’t mentioned Bucky in ages. Probably only a handful of times, ever, in all the years since he first explained it to her. She nods. “I do remember.”

“I can’t explain it,” Steve begins, then sighs. “Obviously. But for a moment, it was like I pictured what Tony said in almost the same way I used to see Bucky. Something more than just a thought, but less than real.”

Peggy looks thoughtful. “Well, I suppose that your thoughts taking that direction might not be so strange when you recall that we did find you frozen beneath the snow near where the Valkyrie went down. You’ve always said the serum enhanced your memory, as well. Perhaps it’s that?”

It’s not unreasonable. Hell, it’s even logical. “That my mind remembers those moments somehow? Just as I lost consciousness or while I was...whatever you would call the state I was in. Frozen but not dead?” He squeezes Peggy’s hands again to ground himself. “It doesn’t explain why Tony would think any of that, though. No one ever knew about the ice except for you, Howard, and a handful of techs who are all long dead.”

“I don’t know Tony quite as well as I’d like, given that I’m his godmother,” Peggy says. “But I do keep up to date on him through Jarvis. Tony’s really quite the child. Too smart by half, just like his father, but he’s always been far more empathetic than Howard. At least, I’ve always thought so.” She presses her lips together, turning to look out the window. “We both know Howard is a good man, but his curiosity too often overwhelms his principles.”

As usual, Peggy’s right on the nose about Howard, easily honing in on the part of the man that Steve’s always both admired and struggled with supporting. It’s the way Howard’s always been; good intentions, but too intelligent and stubborn to let an interesting scientific project go, even when it seems to be unwise. It’s been especially bad lately, with the ramping up of many of his weapons-research facilities in response to the Russians. They’re not at war, not yet, but something is brewing all the same.

Peggy’s voice pulls him back to the moment. “Tony is the same kind of curious, very creative. If he’s been ill, as Jarvis said, I’m sure that it’s just his imagination run away with stories he’s no doubt heard from Howard at some point.” She reaches out to cup his cheek with one hand. “But let me know if it happens again?”

Steve leans into her touch. Nods even as he sighs. Her explanation makes perfect sense.

Even if it doesn’t feel quite right.

***

## 1998

Steve stands at the window of the observation room, looking down at the woman seated calmly at the metal table. Hands folded, perfect posture, face revealing nothing except for what appears to be bored disinterest. Deep red hair pulled back in a bun, tight. It reminds him of a dancer. 

He finds he can’t look away from her, but can’t put his finger on why. She looks familiar somehow but he knows he’s never seen her before today; has never even seen her SHIELD file before an hour ago, and there were no clear photos included in any case. There’s no reason for Steve to recognize her, and yet…

“She’s very good,” Peggy comments as she comes to stand at his side, breaking him from his thoughts. She’s in a sharp suit, as always, makeup flawless and silver hair swept back in an elegant bob. “The best I’ve ever seen, in fact. If she hadn’t admitted outright to who she is—and with Agent Barton vouching for her, no less—I’ve no doubt she could change how we see her so quickly and so completely she could walk right in and out again under our noses.”

“You always were more a spy than a soldier,” Steve says.

“Which means I know the best when I see it,” she retorts. The fine lines around her eyes deepen as she studies the woman below them. “Natalia Alianovna Romanova, former KGB, trained by the Red Room. Known to the intelligence community as the Black Widow. Currently a free agent, working for the highest bidder.”

“So what’s made her decide to throw in with us?” Steve asks. It doesn’t make sense, on the surface; a former Russian spy and assassin suddenly offering herself up to SHIELD. A former Russian assassin that one of their own agents was sent out to deal with, no less.

“A lot of it is the usual deal SHIELD offers. Immunity from prosecution for past actions. Offering information on the KGB, some old, some still relevant through a network of current contacts.” Peggy tips her head thoughtfully. “She also requested—insisted really—that she will only work with Agent Barton.”

“Barton,” Steve repeats thoughtfully. He’s heard the name before, usually in the context of some borderline-unbelievable story. “Coulson’s guy?”

“The one and only,” Peggy sighs, long-suffering. “Coulson thinks very highly of him, and Agent Barton is extremely loyal. But he’s always worked alone. I’m not entirely certain what to think of the request, but apparently Agent Barton has also asked that Romanova be assigned as his partner.”

After all these years, Steve’s adept at reading Peggy even at her most inscrutable. “You think Barton and Romanova made a deal.”

“I do, though I don’t know in what capacity. Barton wouldn’t promise anything that SHIELD wouldn’t deliver on, so I’m not concerned about that.” Peggy’s shrewd gaze studies Romanova below them. “But I don’t much care for being in the dark about how he convinced her to turn herself in.”

Steve nods. He understands Peggy’s concerns. He doesn’t know Agent Barton at all, really. Has heard the name a few times and skimmed his file this morning before coming down here. The guy has always been on Coulson’s team, working immediately under his oversight and rarely on other teams, and to all accounts they work well together—the stories might be nearly unbelievable, but the missions were always successful—so neither Steve nor Peggy saw any reason to suggest a change. 

If the infamous Black Widow is willing to throw her lot in with SHIELD by way of Barton, though, Steve has to admit he’s inclined—not to trust her, necessarily—but to believe that she means what she says.

Except he can’t quite put his finger on why he feels that way, why he’s willing to take such a significant chance on a dangerous unknown. They took seventeen weapons off her person when she came in; someone like that is absolutely a threat.

So why doesn’t Steve see her as one?

“Steve?” Peggy’s voice interrupts his thoughts. “You’ve got that look. What are you thinking?”

And even though it shouldn’t make sense, he says the only thing he can. “We bring her in.”

Peggy studies him for a long moment. “Gut instinct?”

“Something like that,” Steve replies. Whatever subconscious thought urges him on, somehow he’s sure it’s the right move. “Bring her in, give her the deal. Debrief for everything we can get out of her on the Russians, then assign her to Agent Barton as her handler.”

“Generous,” Peggy hums. “To give in to all of it. Not holding some of it back for negotiation.”

“True loyalty can’t be bought,” Steve says quietly. “But it can be earned, if we reciprocate with loyalty, too.”

“Ever the optimist,” Peggy sighs, but she says it with fondness. “But after all these years, I have learned it’s usually worth trusting your instincts about people.”

“It’s certainly not selfless,” Steve shrugs. “If we don’t bring her into SHIELD, there’s no telling where she’ll end up. And I don’t think we want her to be on the other side of the fight. If she’s willing to be our asset, we’d be stupid not to accept.”

“Agreed,” Peggy states with a decisive nod. Gathering up Romanova’s files, she turns away from the window. “I’ll take this to Coulson and set him to arranging her debrief, registration, and I’m sure he’ll leave the orientation and other assorted tasks to Agent Barton.”

“I’ll stay until Coulson gets here,” Steve says as Peggy leaves the room, the sound of her heels tapping against the tile fading down the hall. 

Looking back down through the window, he sees the Black Widow now looking up directly at him; it gives him a moment of surprise, even knowing that there’s no way she can see him from inside the room. Even knowing she’s smart enough to be sure there’s someone observing her from up here. He studies her face, pale and symmetrical, a startling kind of perfection. A mask, one familiar in a way he can’t identify. Not her true face, but not exactly a false one, either.

_The truth isn’t all things to all people, all the time._

It’s a thought so foreign to Steve’s usual worldview it startles him, enough that he takes an involuntary step backwards as though to move away from the words.

He doesn’t know where the words come from, why they crossed his mind now, as clear as if he heard someone speak them.

It reminds him of the way he used to hear Bucky’s voice.

It’s been decades now since he truly imagined his friend at his side, but he’s never forgotten. Never stopped remembering, thinking about him, wishing he’d been real.

Loneliness aches in his chest, and he turns away from the window as though afraid the Widow will see.

He’s glad for the distraction when Coulson arrives, and pushes thoughts of Bucky from his mind. 

***

Natalia is in her newly assigned quarters at the SHIELD barracks, after the last day of more than a month of interrogation, debriefing, and rehashing as much of her life as she was willing to give away without revealing it all to enemy agents. 

Except they aren’t _enemy_ agents anymore, are they? Just agents. Not teammates, that implies some sort of trust and collaboration, but maybe...coworkers? Well, whatever. She owes them nothing, has no intention of seeking friendships or whatever else these Americans seem to value.

The only person here she owes anything to is—

“Home sweet home,” Barton cheers from where he lounges in the doorway. “How’s it feel?”

_Exhausting_ , is what Natalia wants to say. SHIELD may not have tortured her for information, since she was offering it freely enough, but they weren’t kind. But exhaustion is a weakness. 

He greets her neutral stare with equanimity and a careless grin. “Yup, I remember that feeling post-not-quite-torturous-interrogation-debrief. And at least I was an American, even if I was a ‘crazy arrow-shooting bastard.’ Coulson’s words.”

Natalia can’t quite imagine assistant director Coulson, bland-faced and even-voiced and imperturbable, saying that exact phrase, but if anyone could bring that man to cursing, it would probably be Barton. She may have only known him for a matter of weeks, much of which was spent fighting their way out of Eastern Europe and then in interrogation, but he was so...much. Irreverent. Unrestrained. Clever beneath the guise of a fool. 

So very _American_. 

Three whole days while they fought their way out of Hungary and through Slovenia to reach Venice he talked about _hot dogs_ . How they were the pinnacle of food ingenuity, the cornerstone of his happy-go-lucky childhood (and she _knew_ that part was a lie; she’s not stupid, she hacked his file as soon as she knew who he was. He grew up in the circus after running away from an abusive father, there’s no part of that story that would equal happiness) and they were the first thing he insisted they eat the instant they got back to American soil.

It was disgusting.

She cursed him out in Russian for five straight minutes before making him buy her a bottle of vodka so she could try and rinse the taste out of her mouth.

Barton levers himself up and away from the doorframe. “I’m sure Coulson gave you the rundown already, but you’re stuck with me as your handler. Officially we’re partners, as requested. For now you’ve got these quarters, but soon enough they’ll loosen the apron strings and let you live off-base—not that I believe for a second you couldn’t give us all the slip and live wherever you wanted, if you wanted.”

She gives Barton a little shrug, because it is true and they both know it.

The idiot grins like she gave him a prize. “Now! To celebrate your official status as a SHIELD agent, I’ll even show you where I hide the good coffee in the break room. Ready to start your new life?”

“New day, new me,” she says, and it’s sarcastic but also...not. Because it really is a new life this time, not just a mission or a persona or a facade. She even hopes—and it’s a foolish hope—that this might be the last time she has to recreate herself. The last version of herself that she needs to build up from the ground, from nothing.

Even though she knows she’ll still be using the skills trained into her by the Red Room—she’s not an idiot, she knows that’s exactly what SHIELD wants from her, what they expect in exchange for taking her in. But she still hopes that she’ll be doing it for the right side, now.

She half-expects Barton to make some sort of joke, but he just nods with an expression that seems to say, _I understand._ Then he deliberately grins, a change of topic, and stretches as he turns back toward the door. “Come on, it’s coffee time. I am going to make you an Americano.”

“Дурак,” she sighs, rolling her eyes in exasperation. Five Russian and/or American jokes so far today, which she certainly ought be finding more annoying than strangely endearing, but here they are.

Natalia picks her SHIELD ID card up to attach to her jacket, but pauses. The photo is...bad, like all identification photos, but is somehow all the more honest for it. She’s still wearing a mask, will probably always wear a mask, but it feels like this time, at least, it’s a mask of her own face and her own choosing. The name beneath the photo is straight-edged letters and Americanized. _Natasha Romanoff_. It should feel strange; it’s her name, but also not. No longer Natalia Alianovna Romanova, but Natasha Romanoff.

It feels familiar somehow, in a way her chosen aliases usually don’t. She wants to chalk it up to the fact that it’s so close to the name that—as far as she knows—she was born with. But it feels different than that.

Maybe it’s just that this is a new life she’s chosen for herself, for the first time. Not for a mission, not as a result of the Red Room’s manipulation. But a strange combination of her old life and whatever this new one might become.

Whatever it turns out to be, though, it’s hers. 

Natasha Romanoff clips her new badge onto the bottom of her jacket, and follows Clint down the hall.

Clint grandly hands her a tall mug of coffee in the break room. “Your Americano.” He busies himself with his own mug, adding an obscene amount of sugar. WIthout looking at her, he says quietly, “I hope this works out for you. Joining SHIELD and...everything. We really do try and do the right thing. Protect people from the things that go bump in the night.”

“Some people would say we are the things in the night,” Natasha replies. 

Barton gives a little shrug at that. “Maybe. But sometimes you gotta fight fire with fire.” He’s quiet while he chugs half his coffee, then turns to her again with a smile. “Also, I’m not sure what kind of shit you’ve seen, but at SHIELD you’re probably going to see a lot weirder. So enjoy that, or be warned; whatever way you want to look at it.”

She shrugs. “I’m fine with strange, as long as it’s real.” She’s had more than enough of being unmade, unsure of reality and her own memories.

Barton nods. “As real as it gets.”

Natasha toasts him with her mug before drinking.

The coffee really is good.

***

## 2009

Tony jolts awake out of the nightmare, panting and sweating, flailing. _Screaming_. Maybe. Hard to tell through the noise in his head, gunfire and explosions—

“—ony! Tony!” Pepper’s voice breaks through the remnants of the dream. Tony blinks hard out of the dregs of the desert; he’s in their bedroom, shoulders pressed against the corner wall, one arm outstretched as though he’s trying to reach for something—or shoot it. 

Pepper is wide-eyed, sitting up in a jumble of bedsheets. She’s still talking, and slowly her words filter in. “You’re okay, Tony. You’re at home, in the Tower. You’re safe, I promise.” Repeating them again and again, until finally he feels his muscles start to unclench. He lowers his arm. Takes a deep breath, and another, trying to still the sticky feel of panic still swirling inside him.

“Fuck,” he finally mutters. Hunching over, hands on his thighs, he works to stop trembling.

“Tony?” Pepper calls from the bed.

“Fuck every rock and grain of sand in that desert,” Tony snaps out. They both know it’s not really the sand that tears him screaming out of sleep.

He pushes away from the wall, is out the door and deep in the workshop in minutes. Surrounded by machinery and cars and the smells of oil and grease and gasoline. Rock music playing loud enough to drown out the last of the nightmare. 

Six months, six fucking months he’s been back from that cave in the desert. Time heals nothing; if anything the dreams—the nightmares—are worse than ever. When he thinks about it he’s not sure he’s slept more than a couple hours at a time in all of those months.

So he doesn’t think about it.

He welds metal and runs wires, solders electronics and writes code, sits in his luxury cars drinking disgusting green smoothies. Focuses on the design of the latest iteration of his armour. The revamped design for the left boot thruster isn’t firing smoothly, and it’s throwing off his balance as soon as he leaves the ground.

The whole suit feels off in a way he can’t articulate. It’s not wrong or broken, but it’s not what he sees when he imagines the ideal finished product, the last stage of the armour’s evolution. Iteration after iteration, changes to the design, the thrusters, the materials, somehow it’s just...not enough. It doesn’t do enough, isn’t responsive enough. Not when he closes his eyes and pictures armour that can change shape around him, can collapse into the space of his fist or fit as close as a second skin instead of a metal cage.

It’s the thing that has driven Tony his entire life: visions of tech that hasn’t been invented yet. The desire to reach that goal, to make into reality the things he sees in his mind. Even allowing for that aspect of Tony’s nature, the intensity of his drive to build new Iron Man armour, to make it better, stronger, is like nothing he’s ever felt before. It consumes his thoughts, eats hours and days until he has no sense of time.

Because good enough _isn’t enough_. The armour has to be flawless, and perfect, or else how can he protect the people he needs to protect. The people he cares for.

Not that Tony ever saw himself, thought of himself, as a protector. But a lot of things changed in the desert, changed when he saw what his weapons did to people, when he saw what his negligence and carelessness caused to happen. He can’t undo any of it, but he can for damn sure make certain it never happens again.

In those moments, at least, he’s not thinking about the desert.

Fuck, he should probably sleep.

But he can’t, the spiralling thoughts having caught him up in their storm. Tony’s never been a protector, but that’s not exactly the kind of thing he learned from dear old Dad. 

Howard was always as much of a destroyer as he was a creator, and fairly shameless about it; the road to hell and all that. But a rare handful of times he’d get an expression on his face, and in the next breath would be a story from the war, about Captain America. A hero. _The only true protector I ever knew_ , and the near-reverence in Howard’s voice…

Well. Tony’s childish awe soured to bitterness by the time he hit his teens, because Howard sure as hell never spoke of his own son with that tone.

Never praised Tony’s achievements to his face or to his friends; never acted as though he believed that Tony could live up to his expectations. Always holding Tony up to the invisible example of a dead man, an idol, the hero named Captain America.

He should be over it. Tony’s forty goddamn years old and shouldn’t be struggling with this anymore, these insecurities and feelings of unworthiness. These thoughts that he will never be _good enough_. He shouldn’t be comparing himself to a legendary figure from Howard’s past, one the exact opposite of everything Tony has always been. Tall and blond and blue-eyed like some kind of all-American god—

_Wait._

Tony’s hands slow their movements over the holotable, glowing blue images pausing in their display. 

Why does he know what Captain America looks like? Howard’s told the occasional stories over the years, but he never had any photos around and Tony doesn’t think he’s seen a picture of the guy since elementary school history. Even then, it was only the same handful of black-and-white photos that appear in every textbook in the country, and in all of them the Captain was in full uniform and helmet.

So why is Tony’s mind so sure the guy was blond? So sure his eyes were a blue as bright as the holograms in front of him? There’s no way for Tony to know that any of that, but something inside him insists that it’s true. 

He can imagine the Captain’s voice, too, deep and capable of drawing attention and loyalty with a word. Can see how the man moves, a soldier’s posture, head up, shoulders back, chest out. 

Obviously they’ve never met. Captain America died in the War decades before Tony was born, and in any case the man would have been in his fifties by the time Tony would be old enough to remember meeting any of Howard’s contemporaries, anyway.

There’s no way they’ve met, but why won’t Tony’s mind let go of the feeling of familiarity? 

He does his best to focus back on the thruster design instead, but his thoughts keep returning to the nagging, unsettled feeling. He finally gives up and flops backwards into his seat, pushing off with one foot until he’s in the center of the floor. 

“JARVIS, pull up the Infinity file for me, will you?” Blue-edged holo-images fill the air around Tony, and he spins his chair slowly in the eye of the storm. 

The Infinity file is the place for those thoughts Tony just can’t shake, the ones that don’t turn into tech or match up with anything else, the ideas that grab him and won’t let go even as they don’t make sense. It’s self-preservation, really; if he can get those things out of his head and into words and equations and charts, he can get away from their torments and focus.

His eyes skim over a dozen different folders, full of equations for a time-travel theory that he returns to with frustrating regularity, designs for armor and weapons that have nothing to do with his own Iron Man suit, a recording of the lengthy half-drunken rant about all the reasons he doesn’t like the current understanding of multiverse theory— _that_ had been a fun night of too much whiskey and zero sleep—and a dozen other things that lurk in Tony’s mind in the middle of the night. He’d started adding descriptions of his dreams in here a few years ago, in an effort to exorcise them; it never worked all that well, when he’s honest with himself.

He shakes his head to pull himself back from getting lost in the spiral again. “JARVIS, start a new folder. Captain America. Compile all known information and timelines. Compare to my own records. Is there anything that doesn’t...line up? Or that does line up, I guess.” He rubs one hand through his hair. “Shit, I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

_“Certainly, sir,”_ JARVIS says. _“Captain America. Real name unknown, all available military records have been redacted. Only successful candidate of Project Rebirth in 1943, the joint research endeavour of the United States Army and the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Principal project leads included Dr. Abraham Erskine, German-born scientist who sought refuge in the United States; Colonel Chester Phillips, U.S. Army; Margaret Carter, Special Agent with the SSR; Howard Stark, founder of Stark Industries. The goal of Project Rebirth was to create enhanced soldiers for use in the Second World War; no other details are available as all relevant records have been redacted.”_

Tony spins his chair, thinking. He did know his dad and Aunt Peggy were involved in the Captain America project during the War. Their names aren’t in the history books, but Howard’s stories... And it’s been decades since he saw Peggy, or even spoke to her. They lost touch during those years when Tony estranged himself from Howard and all things Stark except the money, and had never really gotten the relationship with her back. Hell, he’s pretty sure she’s married and he’s never even met her husband. 

_“Last known record on Captain America is a 1945 report of his death, listed as Killed In Action on both the U.S. Army and SSR rosters. Cause of death: Plane crash during the final mission related to HYDRA and Johann Schmidt, alias Red Skull. No other details are available as all relevant records—”_

“Redacted, yeah, I get it. Thanks, J,” Tony says. He stares at the information arrayed in the air around him. He doesn’t doubt any of it is true, but none of it feels...right. Captain America died more than two decades before Tony was even born. There’s no way Tony could have ever met him unless the guy came back from the dead—

“Tony?” Pepper’s voice called from the doorway. 

“Morning, Pep,” Tony answers, spinning his chair again to face the door, then standing and striding across the room to press a kiss to her cheek. 

“You’ve been down here all day.” One arched eyebrow accompanies her dry tone, but he can tell she’s worried, too. “And it’s after seven at night. You should come eat something.”

“Shit,” Tony groans. So lost in his head he didn’t realize he ran out of their room in the middle of the night and just never went back upstairs. “Sorry, Pepper. I just…” He waves his hand toward the holograms.

Pepper frowns at him, brushing her fingers through his hair. “What’s got you this time?”

“Same old things,” Tony replies. Monsters and aliens and death. “I just want to keep people safe. Protect them, you, everyone. And I can’t, I don’t have enough tech, enough...something. I’m always missing something…” 

Now that he's opened his mouth it’s like he can’t stop. “I keep building suits because I think that if I can just reach this image I have in my head then I’ll be strong enough. That somehow my nightmares are real, aliens and flying monsters and giants, but if I can just _figure this out_ that I can...prevent it from happening. Or fix it when it’s gone wrong. It’s what I do, I fix things. But I just can’t...reach the answers.”

“Tony…” Pepper sighs, and pulls him into an embrace. He realizes he’s breathing harshly, in and out, so does his best to even himself out. When Pepper finally pulls back, she gives him a small smile, far more patient than he deserves. “I can’t say I understand, but you’re not going to solve this tonight. So come upstairs. Take a break, eat dinner. This will all be here tomorrow.”

He hesitates, feeling the pull to keep working, keep thinking, keep searching for a solution. But as usual, Pepper is entirely right.

None of this is going anywhere tonight. 

***

## 2012

Clint stumbles sideways into the wall as soon as he makes it through the door of the Bed-Stuy apartment. With a groan, he slides down until he’s sitting on the chipped linoleum. Clutching his head, he hunches over to lean on his knees. 

Natasha slips through the door behind him, taking one last scan of the hallway before pressing the door shut and flipping the lock. She pulls out her phone and sets the security measures in place, and confirms that all the cameras and sensors are active and there haven’t been any breaches before they arrived. 

Only when everything comes back clear does she crouch down next to Clint. “Barton, tell me what’s wrong.” Because something is definitely wrong.

“Ugh, head feels like it’s splitting,” Clint grunts. “I keep feeling like I am, I should be, somewhere else. A nightmare where someone else is pulling my strings.” He scrubs his hands roughly through his hair. “Shit, _shit_. Did I fuck up the mission? Everything’s a blur.”

“Mission’s done, went fine,” Natasha says. She pulls Clint’s arm over her shoulder and hauls him to his feet, half-dragging him over to the couch. “You’ve been a bit off all day, but you took a hit to the head when we were fighting our way out of there yesterday.”

Clint clutches at her shoulder as he flops down onto the threadbare cushions. “I don’t think that’s what this is, Nat.”

“Okay,” she nods. They’re long past the point of bullshitting each other. If Clint thinks something else is going on, she believes him. “What do you think is happening?”

“It feels like I’m dreaming,” Clint says, rubbing his face. “But I’m not asleep. I’m sure as hell not religious, but I keep seeing a guy with horns. But the charming-devil type, not the monstrous hell-beast type.”

Natasha grabs the first aid kit from the bathroom and passes Clint some painkillers. “Take those and let them kick in. Mission’s done and we’re home, the apartment is secure. We’ve got time before Coulson expects us for debrief.”

“Thanks,” Clint sighs. He throws one arm over his eyes to block out the light. 

When he seems to be settled, Natasha slides down to sit on the floor beside the couch, leaning back against the edge of the cushions. In the privacy of this apartment, the closest thing she’s ever had to a home, a place even SHIELD doesn’t know about...she gives herself permission to be tired. To let the tiredness show. Even if his eyes were open, she would allow Clint to see. 

Fuck, this mission was a bitch. Most of their missions are, if she’s being honest. She gets it, too; Coulson has all the information, and he knows she and Clint are the best. They get the missions that no one else can handle, the missions that can’t afford to fail. Coulson’s a smart man, and he knows how to make the best use of his people. 

But fuck, she’s tired. Nothing else to do, nowhere else to go, however. All she has is this life she’s built over the past decade and more. Natasha Romanoff. SHIELD agent. Partners with Clint Barton. As close to a true version of herself as she has ever managed before, and she wouldn’t trade Clint for anything. But it doesn’t mean she doesn’t sometimes wish she had a few more shoulders to lean on.

She tries to relax, but the harder she tries the more antsy she feels. As though she should be doing something. _Fight or flight._ That’s what it is. Not that she ever chooses flight, but she can recognize the thought. 

With determination she focuses herself and forces her body to relax, and eventually it’s enough that she falls asleep.

***

_Something roars behind her and Natasha runs. She doesn’t want to be afraid, but it floods her with adrenaline and she races through the gaps between pipes and railings and catwalks. Where is she? The beast behind her roars again, the sound of rending metal and pounding footsteps echoing through the space._

_It’s dark, and she can’t get a good look at her pursuer. She doesn’t want to have to run, but can’t do anything else._

_In the way of dreams, her surroundings shift and change. She hears her own voice, and Clint’s._

_“This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for.”_

_“You’re a spy, not a soldier. Now you want to wade into a war. Why?”_

_She blinks and is in the middle of a city street, rubble and destruction everywhere. Aliens everywhere, grey and black with armour and blasters firing a terrifying blue light. Flying through the air, fighting in the streets. Several converge on her and she fires both pistols, taking one out and wounding another. The third is too close and she dodges and rolls away, coming back up to her feet with enough space now to get several shots off._

_Clint is there, arrows flying from his fingers swift as bullets. People are screaming, the aliens are filling the air with unintelligible screeching, but she still hears Clint’s voice as they stand back-to-back. “You and I remember Budapest very differently.”_

_The aliens keep coming, pouring down from the sky like rain, and all she can do is keep fighting. Her and Clint against the world. Against the universe._

_Except then she’s not alone with only Clint at her back. She can’t get a good look at them, but she feels them there. A tall figure, blond hair and dressed in blue, another in red and silver. A...robot? Something very green. In the dream none of it seems strange. Even feels...familiar. Like family._

_The dream dissolves into a blur of battling aliens and destruction and then she’s flying through the air—not flying, but riding something—and then her vision is filled with a machine holding something that glows bright, blinding blue—_

Natasha jerks awake, one arm outstretched and fingers wrapped around the grip of her pistol. Aiming at nothing, the apartment is empty save for Clint breathing hard behind her. She lowers her arm and checks over her shoulder, to see him sitting bolt upright on the couch cushions, eyes wild and staring back at her. They’re both breathing hard, shivering with tension.

“Bad dream?” Clint asks, but it’s a question asked as though he already knows the answer, and Natasha gets a weird feeling. 

She nods. “You too?” Clint nods back and she rolls the dream events over in her thoughts. They are startlingly clear, and before she really knows what she’s going to say, the words slip out. “You dreamed of monsters, aliens falling from the sky. Destroying the city.” She shakes her head immediately. It’s nonsense, Clint was in her dream but there’s no reason he would dream the same thing.

Except he gives her an unsettled look and nods again. “A hole in the sky, and aliens, yeah.” He flexes his fingers absently, forming empty-handed arrow grips. “I feel like we should be doing something. Fighting. I’m all amped up but we’re at home.”

“Why are we having the same dream, Clint?” Natasha asks in an even tone. That she is feeling the same as he is, muscles buzzing as though she should still be fighting. It’s too much to be a coincidence. “Did someone mess with our minds? Our memories?” She searches her recent memories for anything, a moment, a person, that might indicate someone screwed with her head. She knows what it feels like, knows what to look for inside herself, thanks to all the years with the Red Room and the constant memory manipulation that happened. But nothing stands out. 

Clint hesitates, clearly assessing himself, but finally shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I felt like that in my dream, but the feeling is gone now.” He gestures to the room. “Plus we’re in our shitty, secret Bed-Stuy walk-up. No one would know to make us come here, or to give us memories of this place. Everything else recently is clear in my mind. Only the dreams were weird. So we’re okay.”

Natasha repeats it to herself. “We’re okay.” She looks steadily at Clint. “But we still had what sounds like the same dream, for no obvious reason. I don’t like that.”

“Yeah, I don’t like it either.”

Replaying the dream events over in her head, Natasha pictures the other people in the dream. Though she had not seen their faces or clearly heard their voices, she’d thought of them as friends, as family. Quietly, she says, “I felt as though I knew them. That they are friends. But I don’t know who they are.”

Clint replies consideringly, “Lots of things in dreams feel familiar, in the dream.”

But Natasha shakes her head. “This feels different.”

Blowing out a deep breath, Clint says, “Yeah, it feels different for me, too.”

They both describe as much of their dream as they can recall, comparing details. It wasn’t all the same, but a lot of it overlapped with unsettling accuracy. When they finish, they sit quietly for awhile, listening to the sounds of the city outside the window. Finally Natasha breaks the silence. “We’ll shelve this for now, but...keep an eye on it. If it happens again, if it keeps happening, then something’s up.”

“Then we’re on the same page,” Clint agrees. He sits up on the couch, drops his feet to the floor, and reaches down to pull Natasha to her knees in front of him. “I believe you, you believe me. Whatever this turns out to be, we have each other’s back. We’ll be okay.”

She leans forward until their foreheads touch, and just breathes for a moment. “Sounds like a plan.”

***

“Ready for lunch, Peggy?” Steve carries the tray out the back door and into the garden. Peggy looks up from her book and adjusts her glasses, tucking a bookmark between the pages and setting it aside with a shaky hand.

He gives her a minute to adjust while he sets the plates and cutlery on the table. She’s been having a good day so far, and seems to orient herself easily enough.

“Thank you, Steve darling.” She smiles and pats his hand. “I don’t suppose you’ve made tea?”

Steve leans over to press a kiss to her temple before he takes his seat. “It’s steeping inside. I’ll bring it out soon.” She smiles again and hums in response, and starts slowly eating. 

Steve doesn’t pick up his fork right away. Instead, he studies Peggy. She’s been doing well lately, the new medication making a noticeable difference. Far fewer days where she can’t remember his name, or forgets the date, or talks to him as though they were back in the War, or during the early days of SHIELD. Even knowing that she will eventually get worse again, that the medication only delays the inevitable, it’s still so good to feel like he’s got her back. For at least a little longer.

He’s almost finished eating, mind idling on thoughts of what he needs to do later this afternoon, when he realizes he’s clenching his fist. As soon as he notices, he feels the tension tight through the rest of his body, like he’s gearing up for a fight. Or waiting for something to happen.

“Steve? What’s wrong?” Peggy reaches across the table to lay a cool hand over his fist.

He doesn’t have an answer, though, so smiles and lifts her hand to press a quick kiss against the back. “Nothing’s wrong. Just restless, I guess.”

Peggy sniffs, but smiles back. “Did you skip your run again this morning? I don’t remember if I heard you get up.”

“Yeah, I had my run, Peg,” Steve sighs. He sets her hand back down on the table and stands. “You finish your lunch. I’ll work it off.” 

“Well, far be it from me to stop the show,” Peggy says with a sly wink, and for a moment the decades are wiped away and he sees the rich brunette curls and snapping brown eyes he remembers. Her lips tilt in a teasing smile, still painted bright red even now that the rest of her is pale-haired and lined with age. “Go on, then. Impress me.”

Chuckling, Steve presses a kiss to her hair before stepping off the patio. He jogs circuits around the outer edge of the yard for a while, before finding a clear patch of grass to drop down and start doing push-ups. 

This isn’t a new thing, exactly. Thanks to the serum, Steve’s always found that if he doesn’t get enough physical activity he gets tense and restless, a fountain of energy that needs an outlet. It’s been one of the hardest parts of retirement from SHIELD, if he’s honest. It’s important to him to be here with Peggy, to take care of her. But damn, some days he really misses the constant exertion of SHIELD. Missions, training, sparring; more than enough to keep him steady. 

Except when he pokes at it, the way he feels right now—like he should be in the middle of a fight, not the middle of the yard—isn’t quite the same as that serum-induced restlessness. 

He’s lost count of his push-ups, not that he had any sort of goal past trying to burn off the excess energy. He does a few more before flipping over onto his back to start on a round of sit-ups. 

_The sky tears open above him, a swirling portal of black in the middle of the blue summer sky. Black things falling from it, flying toward the ground. Aliens, monsters. Destruction all around him, buildings being crushed and civilians screaming. Steve pulls the shield from his back and shouts instructions to the rest of the team, but it’s like he’s shouting underwater, the words wavering and half-inaudible. “...on that roof, eyes on everything...turn it back or turn it to ash...gotta try and bottleneck that portal…”_

_He directs his next words over his shoulder but can’t seem to make himself turn to see who he’s talking to. “...we stay on the ground, keep the fighting here…”_

_The security of a friend and teammate at his back brings Bucky to mind as always, just for a moment. Not because Bucky would be there, but Steve always pictured Bucky on his right hand side, knows that’s where he’d be if he were here._

_Then he’s fighting, fighting an endless flood of aliens pouring from the hole in the sky. He forces himself not to look up because it’s too dangerous to get distracted. To fight, punch, throw the shield. Civilians, a bomb, falling to land painfully in a heap of metal that used to be a car and then his eyes are caught by that swirling blue—_

Steve shouts and flails a punch at the air. His chest heaves with panting breaths. He’s not in the ruin of city streets, not in the middle of a firefight, he’s in the yard, lying on the grass, he can see Peggy reading on the patio, and what the fuck was that?

He sits up, looks around, but everything is normal. No aliens, no fighting. He cautiously tips his face up until he can see the sky, but there’s nothing there. Just a few clouds. 

“What the hell?” He’s vibrating with adrenaline, way worse than before. He used to imagine Bucky, sure, but _never_ like this. Not something that overtakes his thoughts, his sight. Not like he’s stuck in a nightmare when he’s not even asleep. 

He lets his head fall back to the grass, closes his eyes and covers them with one hand. Shit. Is he finally losing his mind for real? He’s honest enough with himself to admit that he’s surprised it didn’t happen sooner, given everything he’s been through. The human mind was never really meant to live this long running at full capacity, with no deterioration from age, near-perfect recall. Between the War and SHIELD, the shit he’s seen….

Taking a deep breath, he lets it out slowly and tries to focus his thoughts. A lifetime of imagining Bucky at his side always seemed harmless, but Steve knows harmless sure as hell doesn’t mean normal. However, he’s not looking to find himself locked up in a lab somewhere, so he’ll just...keep an eye on this. See if it happens again like that, if it keeps happening. If it does, he’ll go to Coulson. Get someone from the science team to check him out, the Director will know who’s trustworthy enough to learn the truth about Steve. 

It’s not a good plan, probably not a smart one, but it’s enough for Steve to get his spiralling thoughts under control. Huffing out one last breath, he opens his eyes and levers himself to his feet. 

Peggy looks up at his approach, but he can already tell she’s drifted a bit, her gaze gone vague. She reaches out to him with one thin hand, clutching at his wrist as he crouches beside her chair. “Steve? Where...where have you been? You’ve been gone so long...I’m sorry. So sorry. The plane went down, but we couldn’t find it...”

Steve forces a smile, though he feels it waver at the edges. “I’m okay, Peggy, don’t worry. You found me just fine.”

She looks like she wants to argue but can’t quite find the thread, so Steve gently distracts her to urge her to head back inside for tea. He slowly collects their dishes back onto the tray, keeping one eye on Peggy as she makes her way across the patio and into the house. He follows and gives one last look over his shoulder at the summer sky, but it remains clear.

Nothing but a few clouds.

***

He’s flying.

The suit is tight around him, moving with his body, responsive to every command, and Tony grins as he bursts through the clouds, swooping and soaring. “This is a thing of beauty, JARVIS.”

_“Indeed, sir. I recommend you reduce your altitude by seven-hundred feet in five-point-three seconds in order to avoid an aircraft flightpath.”_

Tony grins, breaking into a roll and dropping down through the cloud layer again, feeling the rush. When he first built the suits, started using them, he would never have anticipated just how much he would _enjoy_ this part. And not even just in an adrenaline-junkie kind of way, but for the beauty and odd peacefulness of it all. 

Then he drops below the cloud cover into a nightmare, face to face with a _creature_ , hideous and grey and larger than a whale. He rolls and spins down, thrusters firing, but there are more creatures, smaller, flying and shooting bright blue energy blasts. One of them crashes hard into Tony, throwing him into terrifying moments of freefall, and Tony’s view is filled for a moment with a hole in the sky, sucking blackness beyond...but not total blackness, there are stars and he knows somehow that the portal leads to another distant part of space—

Another energy blast hits the suit and sends him spinning through the air before he manages to get the thrusters going and reorients himself. Now Tony can see the skyline of Manhattan rushing up before him but it’s wrong, all wrong. Destruction and fire and smoke, and as he descends below the rooflines and follows streets between skyscrapers he sees hoards of the creatures—the aliens, something in his mind supplies—crawling over the city like spiders. 

“What the fuck, JARVIS?!” Tony shouts, but it’s not JARVIS’ voice that answers. Tony’s earpiece instead crackles to life with voices he recognizes, he’s sure of it, but he doesn’t have names or faces. 

“Stark, you got the perimeter.” The commanding voice orders, strong and certain in the face of madness. “Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or turn it to ash.”

Then Tony’s speeding down narrow streets, chased by flying aliens, dodging and banking through tight corners. Firing behind himself to take them out, or leading them into obstacles. He’s talking into the comm, but can’t make out his own words, can’t hear the responses. 

Then suddenly another voice is on comms, coming through crystal clear. “Stark, you hear me? We have a missile headed straight for the city.”

What the fuck does he mean, a missile? Even as he thinks it, Tony finds himself banking hard and shooting straight out of the core towards the water. “How long?”

“Three minutes, at best. Stay low and wipe out the missile.”

Somehow it feels inevitable, like Tony is outside himself and can’t control his actions. Suit thrusters blazing, skimming low to the water’s surface, he follows the signal JARVIS displays on the HUD. _Incoming._

“I can close it! Can anybody hear me? I can shut the portal down!”

“Do it.”

“No, wait!” Tony shouts into the comm. “I’ve got a nuke coming in, it’s gonna blow in less than a minute.” He pictures the hole in the sky behind him. “And I know just where to put it.”

Then he’s meeting the missile out over the water, grabbing it and steering it up toward the portal. There’s more chatter on the comm but he ignores it all. He shoots through the portal into the true nightmare. An unimaginably large black spaceship surrounded by dozens of smaller ones. Thousands of aliens, enough for a hundred armies. 

With the last of the suit’s strength Tony releases the missile, watches it pierce the ship in a giant explosion. He’s falling again, no power left in the suit, can’t hear anymore, can’t see anymore—

He wakes gasping for air, flat on his back on the landing pad of the Tower. His wild gaze searches the sky. Where’s the portal, where’s the threat—

Nothing but blue sky, no black hole into the nightmare, no swarms of aliens filling the air with blaster fire and screeching howls. 

“Tony?” Pepper’s voice calls from inside the common area but Tony can’t stop gasping for air long enough to answer. “Tony, JARVIS sent me up…oh my god, Tony!” He hears the rapid click of her heels across the floor and then she’s crouching at his side, one hand on his shoulder and the other pulling at his shirt to check the arc reactor. “Tony, Tony, what’s wrong. Are you all right?”

“Uhhhhshit,” Tony groans, clutching at Pepper’s forearm. He manages to roll to his side, then struggles to a sitting position with Pepper’s help. “I’m okay, I’m okay.” He rubs a hand over his face, trying to ignore the tremors under his skin. “Ah fuck, what the hell was that…” He staggers to his feet despite Pepper’s restraining hands, and stumbles to the railing, clutching it hard as he looks out across the city. 

No damage to the city, nothing unusual at all. He must have been dreaming? Fallen asleep in the lab and started sleepwalking? It’s never been something he’s done before, but hell, there’s a first time for everything. 

“Tony?” Pepper presses a careful hand to his shoulder, and he reaches up his own hand to cover hers and press it close. “What happened?”

He shakes his head, hard. “Not sure. Nightmare, I guess. Didn’t think I was sleeping, but, well. Must’ve conked out in the lab.” He exhales hard. Maybe it was just a dream, but it felt too real.

“A nightmare about what?”

But he can’t say it. Can’t put it into words.

_The beginning of the end of the world._

***

## 2014

DC in summer is always nice, Steve thinks. Moving SHIELD’s headquarters to the Triskelion here two decades ago had been a good choice; not only did it place them closer to the other major intelligence agencies and government, but the weather was always just a little kinder than New York. He does miss his home city, though, and did his best to get back to the city on the regular to immerse himself in the familiarity of Brooklyn streets. 

If that familiarity included memories of his imaginary adventures with Bucky, well. No one’s business but his own.

The gorgeous weather isn’t enough to take the sour edge off his mood, however. Not that he’s surprised; visiting Peggy these days always makes him a bit melancholy. She’s still as beautiful as ever to his eyes, even with the wrinkles and white hair from the passing of years, and on a good day her sharp wit still keeps him on his toes. 

But the bad days are...hard. When she thinks they’re still in the middle of the War, not just remembering it from the distance of decades. The way her voice shakes as she cries in relief, _Steve? You’re alive...It’s been so long,_ only for her gaze to drift to vagueness before doing it all over again. She’s so confused on bad days when she looks at Steve, ninety years old but with the face and body of a man barely past thirty. It’s painful for both of them.

He leans against the wall outside the nursing home after he leaves, needing a few minutes to gather himself before attempting the rest of his day. Even the breeze isn’t quite enough to clear the scent of industrial disinfectant from his lungs. Today was a bad day—every bad day now is a little worse than the last—and Steve doesn’t want to go home to an empty house, but he also doesn’t want to go to the Triskelion and have to deal with people. 

Instead he finds himself walking aimless through the city, along unfamiliar streets, until he’s miles away from where he started. 

Peggy might still be alive, but he already feels the loss of her, can see the shape of the hole she will leave in his life. She’s the only person still alive who knows the whole truth of him, his confidant for nearly seven decades until the Alzheimer’s stole time and memories from her.

He’s never managed the same closeness with anyone else, a product of his own refusal to try compounded by the need over the decades to keep his distance from others in order to hide his history as Captain America in the War. As far as history is concerned, Captain America died in the crash of the Valkyrie. 

Add to that the realization in the late 50s that he wasn’t ageing anywhere close to the same rate as a human should, and interpersonal relationships became fraught with worry. Would they notice he looks the same after five years? After ten? What’s he supposed to say? Claiming good genes will only work for so long. Letting anyone know who he is, know about the serum, leads only to labs and scientists and always the risk that he’ll be caged and never let go.

Sometimes—times like today, when he feels bowed by the weight of everything—he regrets the way he’s isolated himself. But there’s always that voice inside, the voice of his six-year-old, ten-year-old, sixteen-year-old self that says no one would be as good a friend as Bucky was, imaginary or no. That he could never love anyone the way he loved Bucky.

He skirts around a concrete sidewalk planter full of greenery and jogs out into the street to cross, slowing to let an SUV roll by. Something catches his peripheral vision and he turns, seeing a figure all in black tactical gear standing in the middle of the road less than a dozen yards away. 

_What the fuck?_ Steve reaches over his shoulder but finds only air. Shit, he doesn’t have the shield, of course he doesn’t. He was visiting Peggy. He settles into a fighting stance—barehanded it is—ready for an attack. 

Then he gets a good look at the assailant’s face, pale beneath lank shaggy hair and with flat, dark, _familiar_ eyes...

_Bucky?_

“Bucky?” he repeats it aloud, disbelief and shock and a thousand other emotions barrelling through him. It’s been years...decades...since the last time he saw Bucky. Really, truly saw his image, as strong and clear as the first time in that alley, as the last time lying in his tent in the middle of Europe. Not just the pale shadow of Steve’s thoughts or memories or the desperate wish that Bucky was real and beside him, or at least that his imaginary existence hadn’t abandoned Steve like everything else.

“ _Who the hell is Bucky?_ ” The words are growled low and angry but the voice, it’s Bucky’s voice—

The blaring honk of a horn tears Steve away as he’s forced to jump out of the path of an oncoming car. He stumbles to the sidewalk, spins around to scan the street again and it’s been seconds—less than—but Bucky is already gone. Nothing in the street but vehicles, no one on the sidewalks aside from civilians. No voice in Steve’s mind but his own thoughts.

He’s not sure how long he stands there, immobile, while the city moves around him. Waiting. Wishing. It’s not until the air cools that he realizes it’s evening, the sun low and hidden behind the buildings.

With effort, Steve turns away. There’s nothing left for him here, except to go home. 

Later, if there are tears while he lies awake in the dark, suffocating beneath the weight of a century and a love that was never, could never be fulfilled... 

No one needs to know.

***

“How? How are you not sweating your balls off in that damn catsuit,” Clint groans, wiping his hand down his sweaty face and slumping into the pilot seat of the Quinjet. “We just raced through a firefight in a thousand-percent-humidity jungle and you’re barely…” He waves his hand vaguely in the air over his shoulder. “Misting. So unfair.”

“My balls?” Natasha repeats, raising her eyebrow. She stows the rifles in their rack against the interior hull.

“Your metaphorical balls, whatever.” Clint flips switches and presses buttons across the console. “Not sweaty. Why.”

Natasha smirks as she hits the release to close the ramp. “Black Widows don’t sweat. Part of the training.”

“Wait, what?” Clint whips his head around to look at her over the edge of the seat. Natasha allows her smirk to widen, and he scowls back. “Oh, fuck you.”

Natasha laughs, not unkindly. “You’re too easy. How’d you ever get to be a spy?” She settles into the copilot seat. Clint just mutters something under his breath that sounds remarkably like, _and the Russian horse you rode in on_ , and continues flipping switches while the engines power up. 

She smiles to herself. Clint is fun to tease, and she’s developed a fondness for it over the years. Only ever when they’re alone, of course. No one else has earned the right to see behind her mask. But sometimes the only way to hold herself up under the weight of her own history is to make light of it. To joke, or self-deprecate. But it’s always the dance along the knife’s edge of _too honest_ and _too horrifying_. The never-ending game of two truths and a lie.

Black Widows do sweat; there’s only so much to be done against the biological processes of a body being alive. But the training is real, too, and Widows learn to ignore the body, the discomfort, the very nature of being alive. Ignore the pain and fear and yes, the sweat, not just until the mission is done but always. To show weakness means death, and so she is not weak.

Two truths and a lie, again.

She watches out the windshield as the Quinjet takes off, the green jungle falling away below them until they’re above the clouds and there’s nothing to see but blue and white. She radios SHIELD to report mission success and their ETA, then slouches a little further into the seat. Goddamn but she’s tired, now that the adrenaline is draining away.

She fights the urge to straighten, to pull the mask back into place. Reminds herself that she doesn’t need it with Clint. Not anymore.

Once Clint activates the autopilot and stretches, spinning his seat away from the console, she tosses him an energy bar before tearing into the packaging of her own. 

“To answer your question, I would be a sweaty mess just like you, except that this is a new suit. Test drive for R&D. Microfibre, self-cooling, thermally neutral. A lot of jargon to say it should always be optimally comfortable.” She bites into her bar. _Hazelnut, ugh._

“Man, why do you always get to play with the new toys,” Clint complained around a mouthful of his own protein bar. “I _know_ that the lab monkeys like me better than you.”

Natasha just laughs. “They do like you better. They’re afraid of me. Peasants might make friends with the jester, but they placate the queen.”

Clint gives her a pout. It makes him look like a fish, and she tries to hide her amusement behind a bite of her bar. “Which means first dibs on all the cool stuff. Damn.”

She nods. “First _and_ second dibs.” She folds up the empty wrapper. “But since I like you so much, I already told the tech guys to set you up for the next prototype test.”

“I knew there were perks to being your jester.” Clint extends one hand for a fist-bump, and she rolls her eyes but does reach out to tap her fist to his.. 

They have a couple hours in the air before they’ll be back at SHIELD so they start putting together their debrief report. The faster it’s done, the sooner they can both go home and shower and maybe even relax for a bit. 

Natasha finishes first and settles into a meditative quiet, eyes on the horizon ahead of them. She feels unsettled, and isn’t sure why. The mission went smoothly enough, both Barton and herself remain uninjured. There’s no reason to feel anything but satisfied.

It feels like two truths and a lie. She pushes the feeling down and away, and concentrates on the horizon.

***

Debriefing at SHIELD takes too long, as usual, and by the time she and Clint get back to the apartment, Natasha is exhausted and tired of hiding it. She drops her duffle next to Clint’s in the entryway. She still feels out of sorts, but going over the mission in debrief served to make it clear to her that wasn’t the source of her unease. 

“Well I don’t know about you, but I’m starved,” Clint groans as he wanders into the kitchen. He pulls a fistful of delivery menus out of a drawer. “What are you in the mood for?” 

He starts reading out the menus, but Natasha barely hears him. A wave of...something is swelling up, some feeling. She’s still not always good with identifying emotions, but it’s sharp and tight in her chest. She drifts across the room to the wide window looking out at the evening skyline, but it isn’t the city she sees. Instead it’s like she’s looking through the glass into another room, full of tile and chrome. An operating room, a hospital, with nurses and doctors swarming around the man laid out on the table, all of them in constant motion. Except for the man on the table, who lays still as death.

She’s never seen his face before, yet every line of it is familiar. A black man, middle aged, scars on his face. She knows the sound of his voice. _A friend._ She doesn’t realize she’s speaking until she hears the strained sound of her own voice. “Don’t do this to me, Nick.” 

The flurry of activity stops. “ _Time of death, 1:03am.”_

“Nat?” She turns at the touch of a hand on her shoulder, and for a moment everything feels as though it’s sliding sideways as she sees Clint at her side instead of—

Instead of who? A flash of a tall frame, familiar blond hair, then it’s gone. “Clint?”

“Uh, yeah? It’s just me—hey! Hey, hey, Nat, what’s wrong?” He cups her shoulders with both hands and turns her to face him. His eyes are wide, and his expression borderline frantic.

Her cheeks feel cool and when she reaches up to touch her face she discovers wetness. Tears? Widows don’t cry. She is not weak. She hasn’t cried since she was a child, before the Red Room took her in and beat the weakness out of her. But the swell of emotion is overwhelming and she finally recognizes it as the pain of loss, the sadness of mourning the dead. Except no one has died. Clint is fine, he’s standing right in front of her, and he’s the only one that matters. 

She finally manages to focus on Clint’s face and his muttered string of profanity mixed with awkward attempts at soothing phrases. “Shit, damn, are you okay? Hurt? I knew we should have stopped at medical. Fuckity-fuck, Nat. Okay, calm down, you’re all right.”

As suddenly as the feelings came, they began to fade away, like a dream after waking. Letting out a shaky breath, she interrupted Clint’s rambling. “Clint. _Barton_. I’m fine.”

His expression is still a little frantic. “You were _crying,_ Natasha. Fucking hell.” He studies her face before nodding and exhaling hard, letting go of her shoulders to rub both hands roughly over his face. “Okay, okay. Hell of a homecoming.”

“Yeah,” Natasha says, wiping the rest of the dampness from her cheeks. She casts a wary glance over her shoulder at the window, but all she sees is the sparkling lights of the city skyline. Same as always.

“That was...more than the dreams,” Clint says quietly, voice tentative. 

“Much more.” Natasha sighs. “I’m awake, for one thing.”

“Yup. So, we’re going to talk about this, but first showers and dinner. Executive decision,” Clint states, heading back into the kitchen and grabbing a menu from the pile without looking at it and fishing his cell from his pocket. “You’ve got first shower, I’ve got food duty.”

***

The shower restores her equilibrium enough that Natasha feels more or less her usual self by the time she walks back into the living room. Clint squeezes her shoulder as he heads down the hall. “Food should be here in ten.” 

When the knock sounds at the door she’s not startled, but still feels unsettled enough to keep a knife tucked in one hand hidden by the open door while she passes the delivery guy a handful of bills and takes the bag in return.

By the time Clint returns, rubbing his damp hair with a towel, she’s got everything spread out on the coffee table. Turns out they’re having Thai. They both take a few minutes to eat before Clint says, “So, waking nightmares? That’s...not awesome.”

“Nightmare is as good a word as any,” Natasha sighs. “And no, not awesome.” She describes what she saw, the man on the table bleeding out. “I don’t know who he is, but I knew him. Just like the other dreams of familiar strangers.”

Clint nods around a mouthful of noodles. He knows her dreams as well as she knows his. They’ve both spoken of them enough times, compared notes because they’ve both had dreams a little too similar to one another.

“The hot blond guy. The robot. Now this guy, who I don’t think I’ve seen,” Clint murmurs. 

Natasha hesitates to say the next thought, but it can’t stay unspoken forever. “I think it’s getting worse. The dreaming, or whatever it is.” Clint nods, but doesn’t interrupt. She pokes her chopsticks into a piece of chicken. “There were flashes, before. Things that didn’t make sense, or seemed different that I thought. But the Red Room messed with my head so much…” She thinks through the next part. “Since that day in twenty-twelve, though, when we both felt it? I don’t think I’ve gone a month without dreaming of those people...whoever they are.” _Friends_ , her mind supplies, even though they are still only familiar strangers.

Her words hang in the air while they both eat quietly, before Clint speaks. “I think you’re right. That they’re getting worse, or stronger, or clearer. Something.” He pauses. “I’ve been dreaming of the family again. My family, I guess.” 

Natasha nods. It’s not the first time; Clint’s been having dreams of them for nearly a decade. A family he’s never had full of people he’s never met. A wife with long brown hair and pretty, kind eyes. Two kids, a boy and a girl, shouting for their Daddy. A rambling old farmhouse in the middle of a field of wildflowers, like a picture from a book.

“The last one was so clear, it felt like I could reach out and touch them,” Clint says. “Like when I opened my eyes I would really be there, in that house. That if I opened my mouth, I’d say their names.” He shakes his head in frustration and sets the carton back on the table. “And then I wake up next to you instead and I’m so confused. Sad, mourning a family I never had.”

Reaching out, Natasha slides her fingers through Clint’s and clasps his hand tightly. “I was mourning the man I saw die, the way you mourn an old friend.” She leans her forehead against the curve of Clint’s shoulder for a long moment, before raising her face again and meeting his eyes.

“I don’t think these are dreams.”

“Then what are they?” Clint asks. It’s rhetorical, but Natasha replies anyway. 

“I don’t know.” She stares across the room at the window, still an innocuous pane of glass and a nighttime city. _It feels like two truths and a lie._

But which part is the lie?

***

_“I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am.”_

Natasha hears her own voice speaking, but to who? ”Do you know this thing?”

The voice from behind her is familiar, but when she tries to turn to look, she can’t seem to move. “Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years.”

The face on the screen continues to speak, green lines on black. _“First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972, I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body; my mind, however, that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain.”_

“How did you get here?”

That electronic voice again. _“I was invited.”_

“It was Operation Paperclip after World War II,” Natasha finds herself saying, the words coming without her thinking them, but the information feels strange. She can’t remember anything by that name, at SHIELD or elsewhere, yet she keeps speaking. “SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value.”

_“They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own.”_ There is laughter now, in the electronic voice and the background click and hum of the databanks.

“HYDRA died with the Red Skull.” It’s maddening, how she knows that voice but can’t put a name to it. Can’t seem to turn to face them. 

_“Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.”_

“Prove it.”

_“Accessing archive,”_ Zola’s green rictus grin vanishes and the computer screens flicker with images, but they are too fast and too unclear, she can’t make sense of what she’s seeing. _“HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crises, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed.”_

“That's impossible, SHIELD would have stopped you,” Natasha says. There’s no way...

_“Accidents will happen. HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life; a zero sum.”_

The digital green face splinters and the sound of shattering glass thrusts Natasha out of the dream into wakefulness. She’s crouched on the mattress, knife in hand and eyes scanning the room before she even realizes she’s moved.

“Nat?” The sleepy mumble has her spinning around. _Clint_. It’s just Clint propped up on one elbow rubbing his eyes. He squints at her, at the knife, then his eyes go wide. “Whoa, hey. Nat. You’re okay.” He sits up slowly even as his eyes scan the rest of the room, half-shadowed in the pre-dawn light. “We’re good, no one here but us. Security system is secure,” he adds, tapping the screen of his phone on the nightstand to check for a breach.

The tension slowly bleeds from her muscle and bone until Nat is sitting on the mattress instead of holding a battle-ready crouch, weapon down and heartbeat slowing. She lets her shoulders sag and breathes out long and slow. “Sorry.”

“Hey, remember the deal. No saying sorry in bed unless we fuck up a sex thing,” Clint says, and Nat can’t help but huff out a laugh. _This guy._

“Well, I definitely didn’t fuck up a sex thing.” 

Clint gives her a quick little grin, before letting it fade. “Bad dreams?” He knows her nights well enough that it’s mostly rhetorical, but she nods anyway. 

“Bad something.” She shifts back up the bed to Clint’s side, and slips the knife back into the sheath tucked between the mattress and the headboard. He props himself up onto the pillows and tugs her close, until her cheek rests against the warm skin of his shoulder. He squeezes her bicep gently, a silent question. 

The room slowly brightens as the sun comes up. It makes it easier to recount the dream without being overwhelmed by it. Made the strange images feel more distant, less immediate.

“It feels so real when I’m in it,” she says, trying to put words to a feeling “But I feel like I did in the Red Room when I’m outside of it again. That I’m looking at a life that is a perfect fake.”

They are quiet while Clint digests everything she described. She can almost hear his thoughts churning as he processes. When he finally speaks, it’s not what she’s expecting.

“We’ve been with SHIELD for what, nearly twenty years?” He pauses and makes a face. “Fuck that’s a long time. But between both of us, before and after SHIELD, we’ve seen some shit. Insane shit.” He pauses to sort out his thoughts. “So whether these dreams-that-aren’t dreams are visions, or fairy-tale magic, or your subconscious trying to tell you something, or whatever the fuck they turn out to be, it’s not going to be the worst or weirdest thing either of us have experienced.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” Natasha mutters dryly. 

“So my question is, regardless of where these dreams are coming from or why they’re happening… Do you think they’re true?”

“Yes,” Natasha whispers. It’s instinctive, no hesitation. Pure gut feeling. Whatever else these dreams are or aren’t, she knows in that deep part of herself that she keeps hidden from everyone and everything, that the dreams are _true_.

And if the dreams are truth then something else is a lie.

“Okay,” Clint says. “I believe you, and I agree. I feel the same way about the family that lives in my head. Something about them is true, even though they don’t technically exist.”

Natasha lets that certainty settle inside her. Sorts through thoughts of her years with SHIELD, her second chance to try and be something other than what the Red Room built her to be. The dreams that might not be dreams.

There’s one way to try and find out what is the truth and what is the lie.

“We need to investigate SHIELD. See if what Zola said in my dream is true.”

***

“So that was terrible.”

Natasha looks down at Clint where he’s sprawled flat in the mud of the riverbank, sopping wet and heaving for breath. The smell of burning oil and scorched metal permeates the area, hazing the air. “Given I just saw you fall out of a burning helicarrier and figured you drowned, I agree. Terrible.” She reaches down a hand.

Clint groans, clutching his ribs, and manages to sit up with her help. “It was more of a general comment covering the past three days. But also, in my defense. One, I jumped because Two, the helicarrier was on fire and literally crashing into another helicarrier.”

Natasha hums, just to be difficult, and to mask the remains of her fear. Widows weren’t supposed to feel fear, but when she saw Clint tumbling through the air to hit the water so hard… Fear is the only name for what she felt. 

Staggering to his feet, barely, Clint leans heavily against Natasha, arm over her shoulders. She props him up, feeling water seep through her suit all down her side. 

“We shouldn’t stay here,” she says as the sounds of sirens drift across the river. But neither of them move to leave. Instead, Natasha’s eyes are drawn away over the water to the giant smoking wreck of the Triskelion and three helicarriers burning in the middle of the Potomac. They did that, her and Clint. With help, sure, Coulson and those still loyal to SHIELD. But as soon as she and Clint started looking, because they knew what they were expecting to find, it was almost laughably easy.

HYDRA in SHIELD. Growing like a parasite for the last fifty years, hidden in shadows and corners, in governments and street thugs. _Cut off one head, two more shall take its place._

Just like the dream that clearly wasn’t quite a dream. 

“How’d you even get out of there?” Clint asked. “The place was coming down around you after the first helicarrier took out most of the side.”

She shrugs. “Stole Pierce’s helicopter, took off from the roof. Barely away from the building when I saw you falling, managed to keep you in sight and land nearby. Better to ditch it, through.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “So what’s next? We’re possibly criminal fugitives. Definitely unemployed. What are two former spies-turned-agents to do?”

She can feel the heat of the fire despite the distance, can hear the groan of metal and hiss of flames. The literal burning of metaphorical bridges. “You always said you wanted to retire to a farm in the country.”

“I did say that,” Clint agrees. For a moment he tips his head forward to rest his forehead against her temple.

“So,” she continues, hesitant in a way she never is. “There’s a country property. I picked it up awhile back. It’s not…your farm. But maybe it could be ours.”

Clint’s voice against her ear is exhausted, but warm. “Sounds good.”

They move in unspoken agreement, away from the river and toward the trees. Before they slip away, Natasha takes one last look at the fire, then turns away from the ashes of her life to remake herself once again.

***

“Tony? Are you seeing this?” Pepper’s voice is preceded by the sound of her heels clicking across the workshop floor. She sounds concerned, and Tony quickly pushes himself out from under the framework of the prototype large arc reactor. She’s dressed for the office and would usually be on her way downstairs by now. 

“Pep? What’s wrong?” 

“Something happened in D.C.,” she says, coming to stand beside him and flicking her hand across the tablet she holds, sending the video up onto the hologram display in front of them. A live news feed fills the space, showing a scene of destruction—a burning pile of metal and rubble, the remains of a large building and something Tony can’t quite identify.

“Too big to be a plane crash,” he says. Except then the news feed flips to a clip from earlier in the day, showing three massive air vehicles— _helicarriers_ , his brain supplies, and he’s not sure where the word comes from—rising out of the Potomac. The video is overlaid with a voiceover by a reporter, but after a few seconds Tony tunes it out. It’s nothing but news-speak in the way that they just describe what they’re seeing but have no real information about what’s going on. 

But now that he can see the building, he recognizes it as the Triskelion. He’s been there a handful of times to consult with SHIELD labs, but not recently. Given that the video shows the massive ships colliding with each other and then the building, taking everything down in smoke and flames, he clearly won’t be stopping by again anytime soon.

“No one knows what happened,” Pepper says. “Whether it’s an attack of some kind, or something else.” Her phone chirps from her hand, and she glances at the screen but doesn’t answer. “The board is freaking out. They keep pointing out that now would be a great time for you to debut the new weapons they’re still sure you’re secretly working on.”

“No weapons, just the arc reactor,” Tony replies, but his voice is distracted. Watching the destruction on screen, it feels familiar. Like he’s seen it before. He thinks, _What the hell, Cap?_ and promptly shakes the thought away because he doesn’t even know where that came from. 

“ _Sir, I’ve found something I believe you should see,_ ” JARVIS’ voice interrupts. “ _A data dump from private Triskelion servers onto the Internet occurred at 2:41pm today, approximately thirty-five minutes prior to the destruction of the Triskelion building. Included in the approximately 1.2 million confidential SHIELD files are several items relevant to the Infinity file.”_

“Show me,” Tony demands, attention suddenly hyper-focused. This has never happened before; nothing he’s ever put in the Infinity file turns up elsewhere, always leaving Tony with only dead end ideas and unresolved curiosity.

A second hologram screen appears to the right of the news. “ _Files released include several unredacted documents pertaining to Captain America and his work at both the Strategic Scientific Reserve and later SHIELD. Several of these documents appear to match the redacted ones from my previous search.”_

Data fills the screen and Tony takes it all in with a feeling of unreality. Captain America’s given name was Steven Grant Rogers, and the black and white standard Army mugshot showed a square-jawed man with light hair and light eyes that Tony somehow _knew_ were a sunny golden blond and an unreal sky blue.

Pepper touches Tony’s shoulder, voice questioning. “Tony? What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure. But I feel like I know this guy,” Tony says. “Keep going, J.”

_“A number of documents dated after 1944 indicate that Captain Rogers did not die in the crash of the Valkyrie. It appears that in 1949 he was found by Margaret Carter and Howard Stark buried in ice near the site of the wreckage. When they brought the body back, the Captain appears to have—”_

“Spontaneously resuscitated, what the hell?” Tony’s eyes race along the file on the screen faster than JARVIS’s voice. Fuck a duck, the guy _came back from the goddamn dead_ and woke up on the plane halfway back to the States.

The next several screens contain a slew of medical data, not all of which Tony understands, but it really does seem to boil down to ‘Captain America’s frozen body came back from the dead.’ All of the medical documents were in Howard’s handwriting.

_“According to these records, your father and Agent Carter took great pains to keep Steve Rogers’ identity secret from the rest of the SSR and SHIELD,”_ JARVIS continued. _“It seems that they ensured that the reports of Captain America’s death at the end of World War Two remained on the official record. Steve Rogers served as a tactical agent and strategist with the SSR and later SHIELD under multiple aliases over the last seventy years, but not under the banner of Captain America. There are a great number of mission files that I can identify as involving Captain Rogers under various aliases. The final documents, dated approximately five years ago, indicate that he retired from SHIELD.”_

“The man, the myth, the legend,” Tony murmurs. Not dead after all. Holy shit.

A hazy memory teases at his mind, young and scared and staring up at a giant. _You’re supposed to be dead._

But Tony’s never met this guy. Surely. There’s no way. But if the guy wasn’t dead…

Had _never been dead..._

“JARVIS, run a comparison of the dates and locations of those mission reports against my own history, and against the rest of the Infinity file. Extrapolate where you can, within reason. Specifically, where was Rogers.”

_“Certainly, Sir. What are you looking for?”_

Tony pauses. Thinking it is one thing, but saying it out loud... “Could I ever have met him?”

“Tony, _what_ is going on?” Pepper’s voice is shaking, and when he looks at her he sees she’s wide-eyed and worried. Maybe even scared. 

Now that he’s outside the torrent of his thoughts Tony realizes he’s standing in the middle of a sea of screens and holographic images in a display that looks like a damn conspiracy wall from a movie. Shit.

“What is all this? What is this...Infinity file?”

“My nightmares,” he mumbles, distracted as the data tries to pull him back in. He feels so close to something, like there are answers hiding just out of reach. _There’s something here, I know it._

But Pepper isn’t having it, and with a stern expression turns Tony to face her, both hands on his face. “No, Tony. That’s not going to cut it right now. Tell me what I’m looking at, because it looks crazy and I know you’re not.”

Tony gives a strained laugh. “Sometimes I feel like I am going crazy.” He squeezes his eyes shut and leans his forehead against her shoulder for a moment before pulling back. “I call this the Infinity file. It’s all stuff that....gets stuck in my head. Some of it really is the nightmares, some of it is just ideas, or tech, or whatever other bullshit grabs me and won’t let go, but that doesn’t….fit anywhere else. Stuff that feels wrong, somehow, but I don’t know why.”

Pepper’s expression softens, and she runs her fingers through his hair. “Tony. I’m still concerned, but… Does this help?”

“Some.” Tony shrugs, a shadow of his usual irreverence. “Gets it out of my head, at least. Gives me somewhere to put it, so I can focus on other stuff.” He turns his head to scan the holoscreens surrounding them. “But it’s always still there, you know? In the back of my mind, in my sleep. When I sleep. God, Pep. I’m a piping hot mess.”

Pepper still looks worried, but she manages a small smile. “Well, I guess you’re my mess.” She gestures at the screens, her tone serious. “I’m still going to worry about this, Tony. Remember you can talk to me, please. And say something if it stops helping.”

Tony lets his head sink back down onto Pepper’s shoulder, and he breathes out a long sigh. “Will do, Miss Potts.” She winds her arms around his head and shoulders, and presses a kiss to his hair. They stand there for a while, just being together, and Tony feels more centered by the time JARVIS interrupts.

_“The data comparison is complete, Sir. Captain Rogers has spent a great deal of time outside the States on various missions, as well as domestic missions but not in the vicinity of yourself. However, there is one exception, in which Captain Rogers was in New York for three consecutive months during 1979 which overlaps with summer break after your second year at Phillips Academy. Unless I am mistaken, you spent most of that summer at the primary Stark residence in Manhattan.”_

“Is there a record of Rogers visiting the house?” 

_“Unknown, Sir.”_

Tony sighs, rubbing his hands over his face. The feeling that answers are just out of reach won’t let him go.

“What does it mean?” Pepper asks.

“I’m not sure yet,” Tony replies, frustration eating at him. “I feel like there’s something I’m missing. JARVIS, keep analyzing the data dump against the Infinity file. Let me know if anything else catches your attention.” WIth a swiping gesture of his hand, he closes the holographic displays.

_“Will do, Sir.”_

***

Steve pauses in the middle of reading aloud to Peggy when his phone vibrates loudly against the tabletop. The display flashes _Unknown Number_ , except it’s not just vibrating a normal ring; Steve recognizes the pattern. Morse code for the letters _P_ and _C_.

“Sorry, Peg. It’s Phil, I better answer.”

“Mmm, go on, then,” Peggy murmurs vaguely. “Tell him I’ll see him tomorrow at the office. I’m sure he wants...to know…” She trails off and turns to stare toward the far wall, fingers picking at the edge of the blanket. 

Steve lets the phone keep ringing for a second, his eyes on Peggy. Today’s not a bad day, but not a good day either. She’s been drifting a lot, but thankfully hasn’t been too upset. But Steve has a bad feeling about Phil’s call, and for a long moment debates not answering. Steve retired five years ago to take care of Peggy, and Phil hasn’t called once in all that time—which means that whatever today’s call is about, Steve’s probably not going to like it.

Striding across the room to stand by the window, he looks out across the parking lot and hits the button to answer. “Director Coulson.”

“Rogers,” Coulson’s dry voice returns the greeting. The man usually sounds somewhere between bored and sarcastic, but today his tone is neither. Serious and tense. “I assume you’re not watching the news.”

Steve’s gaze flicks over to where the television plays a music channel in the corner; he rarely has it on when he’s here since it only seems to confuse Peggy. “No. I’m with Peggy.”

“Good,” Coulson replies. He pauses. “There’s no easy way to say this, Cap.” The words cause every muscle in Steve’s body to tense. “SHIELD is gone. Two of my agents, Barton and Romanoff, discovered that HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD decades ago. They were planning something bad, the world-changing kind of bad, and the only way to stop them was to tear it all down.”

Steve’s across the room and flicking the television on before Coulson finishes speaking, and in seconds the screen is full of helicarriers and fire and the rubble of the Triskelion. He stares in near incomprehension, fisting his free hand in his hair. “Phil, what the fuck is going on?”

By the time Coulson finishes filling Steve in on the last three days—Barton and Romanoff discovering HYDRA, the extent of the corruption, the helicarriers and an algorithm designed for the death of a million people—Steve’s seen the news video replay six times. Watched the helicarriers crashing into each other and falling from the sky in a flaming ball of metal, destroying the Triskelion in the process. 

“How many casualties?” Steve asks. He can’t help asking, even as he doesn’t want to know. 

“Not as many as there would have been,” is all Coulson says, and Steve can tell he’s not going to get anything else out of the man. 

“So what now?” Steve’s usually the strategist, but he’s at a loss. This is nothing he could have anticipated, no matter that he feels as though he somehow should have known. Should have _noticed_ . He turns to look at Peggy. Thankfully she’s fallen asleep. God, if he has to explain to her what happened to the agency she spent her entire life building, it’s going to crush her. _How could I have missed this?_

“I wish I could tell you there’s nothing you need to do,” Coulson sighs. “I know you have Carter to worry about. But the data dump means the cat’s out of the bag. It’s only a matter of time until the knowledge that Captain America Steve Rogers is alive isn’t a secret anymore.”

“Shit.” Steve moves back to the window, but now he’s assessing exit points and checking for potential hostiles. 

“You and Carter should be safe enough for now,” Coulson continues. “I built both of your current covers myself when each of you retired, and kept them off the SHIELD books, so they should still be secure. I’m going to do everything I can to keep you out of the storm.”

“You know I won’t be able to stay out of it forever,” Steve sighs. Peggy murmurs in her sleep, agitated, and Steve reaches over to gently stroke her hand until she settles. Whether his identity goes public, or his own need to make things right sends him back into the fray, Steve’s torn but can already tell that one way or another he’ll be back behind the shield.

“I know,” Coulson says. “But I’m sure I can buy you some time. Maybe a few years, if we’re careful.”

Steve carefully squeezes Peggy’s fingers. She’s still beautiful, but so thin these days. Papery skin and visible veins, white hair and clouded, confused eyes. “A few years,” Steve says, and leaves the rest unspoken.

***

## 2016

The funeral is hard.

Not just the reality of it, that Peggy is gone. That even though Steve tries to tell himself that she’s finally at peace, he mostly feels hollow and alone. But there was the added layer of media attention, that somehow Steve’s name got out—finally, inevitably, despite all of Coulson’s efforts—and so much of the day outside of the somber moments inside the church became about Captain America attending the funeral of his wife. 

It’s a belittlement of her achievements, of her importance to the world as the founder of SHIELD, but there’s little Steve can do about it. Fighting with the media, putting out a statement, none of that will change minds. And nobody deserves to see that part of him that hurts so much right now.

He’s just so tired.

After three weeks of drifting aimlessly through the house, of avoiding reporters, of nights spent sleeping too much or not sleeping at all, he’s not any less tired but he can’t bear to stay in this limbo. He’s never done well with idleness, always had a direction to keep himself moving forward. A purpose.

And there’s only one purpose he was built for, in the end.

***

A week later Steve strides through the brick halls of SHIELD’s current headquarters, a repurposed SSR bunker that Steve’s familiar with from sometime in the 60s. Some of the rooms have changed and there’s a lot more tech and glass, but the basic layout remains the same. He ignores the stares and whispers of agents and techs as he passes. It’s a reminder that he’s recognizable now, and not just for the shield he carries on one arm. Now they know his face, and his name. He’s no longer a shadow in the corners of SHIELD.

The director’s office is in the same place, the large one in the northwest corner. He comes to a halt just inside the doorway. Phil’s already standing in front of his desk facing the door, and he gives Steve a sombre smile. “I didn’t expect to see you, Captain.”

Steve nods, and gives an ironic smile and flicks his eyes toward the holoscreen on the desk. “Saw me coming, though.”

Phil snorts quietly. “Heard you coming, more to the point. The staff grapevine is almost as fast as the security cameras.” He waves Steve into the office as the door slides shut with a quiet hiss. 

In the privacy of the office, Steve looks around. Cataloguing the changes. Letting out a slow breath, he lets his shoulders slump slightly. “It’s good to see you, Phil.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Steve.” Phil gestures to the couches across the room and Steve follows, sinking into the surprisingly soft cushions. 

“I’m sorry, again, about Peggy’s passing,” Phil says quietly. He’d been at the funeral, but Steve had been swamped with attention and grief, and they hadn’t managed more than a nod and a handful of words. “She was the core of this organization, and I like to think we’ve lived up to her aspirations.”

“You did,” Steve replies softly. “We all did. She expected so much, but the belief she had in all of us… Made it impossible not to do everything in our power to strive for those ideals.”

Phil nods, and reaches into a cabinet to pull out a bottle of scotch and two glasses. Pouring them each a shot, he raises his glass in Steve’s direction. “To Director Carter.”

“To Peggy,” Steve quietly replies, clicking the rim of his tumbler against Phil’s. They drink in silence. He eventually breaks the silence. “How’s your team these days?”

The question gets a real smile out of Phil, not his inscrutable-director one. “Good. I’ve got a good group right now. Melinda, of course. But we also picked up a pair of science techs from the Academy, Fitzsimmons, a couple years before the fall of the agency. Absolutely genius. A couple other tactical specialists, and a hacker-turned-agent. Rebuilding has been tough.” Phil leans back in his seat. “But they’ve got the right stuff, the determination and the focus. The belief that SHIELD is doing the right thing.”

Steve nods, staring into his scotch while he slowly turns the tumbler between his hands. Finally he looks up, and meets Phil’s eyes. “Is there room for one more?”

“There is if it’s you,” Phil immediately responds, like he wants to get his agreement in before Steve can change his mind, and Steve can’t hold back a chuckle.

“You didn’t seem interested in coming back out of retirement before,” Phil points out, and the question is there even if he doesn’t ask it out loud.

“I need to do something. A mission, a purpose. I’m just drifting around the house, and I can’t stand it.” Steve shakes his head, a bit at a loss. “I don’t know what else to do, but at least this is familiar.”

“For the record, I’d take you back regardless of the reason,” Phil says dryly. “But wanting to keep busy isn’t the worst reason to get back into the game.”

***

The next month is still lonely, the hole in his life left by Peggy still aching. But the details needed to bring Steve back into SHIELD and get him up to speed on the years he was retired act as an admirable distraction. He’s taking on a role somewhere between agency strategist, mission specialist, and field agent, which he knows owes as much to his own history at SHIELD as it does to Phil’s personal opinion of Steve. 

Either way, he’ll take it. Though he’s only worked a couple missions with Phil’s team so far, they’re good people, if a little off-the-wall. But it makes him smile, reminds him of the Howlies just a little, and being part of a team again feels good. Fills that aching hole just a little bit.

And then he’s on a mission in Bucharest, searching for their target, and when he steps through the doorway of an apartment in a dingy concrete building he feels a little like the world slips sideways. Bucky is there in front of him for the first time since that day in DC.

It’s a version of Bucky Steve’s never seen. Expression striving for blankness but only wary, a modern hoodie and jeans with leather gloves hiding the metal hand. A black ballcap casts a shadow over his face, with his hair hanging loose beneath.

“It always ends in a fight,” Bucky says. It’s the hopelessness in his voice that hits Steve, as though it’s inevitable. He wants to go to Bucky, wrap him up in a hug, tell him that things will be okay. 

He knows, he _knows_ Bucky isn’t real, but he’s been so lonely and the desire to touch is too strong and Steve steps forward. “Bucky—”

A sound at the door causes him to turn, shield up and poised to swing. He lets out a breath. It’s just Agent May.

“Building’s clear, we gotta go. Intel says the target’s on the move.” She glances down the hallway, then back at Steve when he doesn’t move to follow. “Rogers. You good?”

Steve looks around the room again, but it’s empty. It was always empty.

Closing his eyes against the ache, he turns back to May. “Let’s head out.”

***

Steve sleeps badly that night. Wakes from dream after dream, every time he falls back asleep. But it’s not the dreams that upset him; it’s that he can’t seem to stay in them. And he wants to, because Bucky is in all of them.

The two of them fighting side by side, like poetry in motion or a deadly machine, protecting each other in that scrubby little Bucharest apartment. On the run across rooftops and parking garages while being chased by soldiers and police. It’s not gleeful, not fun, but it feels right to have Bucky near him, fighting beside him. Like it’s the only place either of them should ever be.

He gives up on sleep a little before dawn, and wanders out of the bedroom to sit by the living room window with his sketchbook in his lap. He hasn’t had time to draw much, lately. SHIELD keeping him busy, which is what he wanted, and why he went back. 

He’s unsettled and the longing for Bucky to be here with him is a physical ache, tight and hot behind his breastbone. He sketches Bucky’s face, the version he saw in Bucharest, half hidden behind the hat and hoodie. Then he moves on to the Bucky he saw in his dreams, sketching out fluid fighting poses, his quiet profile looking out a car window, a small smile from a half-remembered story being shared. 

As the sun comes up over the skyline, Steve finds himself focused on filling in the fine details of Bucky’s face. Bucky’s expression is complicated, layered—sorrow and grief, quiet aching uncertainty, longing, determination. Bucky’s words from the dream drift through Steve’s mind. _“I don’t know if I’m worth all this, Steve.”_ His tone matches his expression, sad and lonely and hurt. And Steve wants to take it all away, tell him that they’re together so everything will be okay, tell him that he’s worth everything. Anything. That a sacrifice isn’t a sacrifice when it’s made for love.

He blinks against the sting of tears in his eyes. Closes the sketchbook before they can fall, protecting the drawings. He’s never known why he sees Bucky when and where he does, never bothered to wonder about it when it’s always been such a part of his life. But the aching longing for Bucky rides right up against the painful hollow left by Peggy’s death, so he’s not all that surprised that his mind would reach for Bucky’s image. 

He’s oddly grateful, even as he wonders if it’s all that healthy that a sign of his grief at losing Peggy is to reach for the comfort of his imaginary childhood friend. 

But he doesn’t want to stop, either, so he just sits there watching the sun rise, and replaying the events of his dreams, the expressions on Bucky’s face, the sound of his voice, over and over in his head.

  
  


*******

## 2018

Tony jogs the last few feet to catch up to Pepper. He loves her, loves running with her, but damn she’s quick with those long legs. “Slow down, slow down. I’m totally not kidding.”

Pepper laughs as they slow to a stop beneath the spreading limbs of a tree. “You’re totally rambling.”

But Tony’s excited now, and trying to make a point. “No, I’m not.”

“You’ve lost me.” Pepper shakes her head with a fondly exasperated smile. Tony thinks that might be his favourite of Pepper’s smiles; if nothing else, it’s certainly the most frequent. 

But his point. “Look, you know how when you’re having a dream, and in the dream you gotta pee?”

Pepper is outright laughing now, he can tell, but she puts on a serious, _I’m humouring you_ face. “Yeah.”

“Okay, and then you’re like,” Tony waves his hands for emphasis. “‘Oh my god, there’s no bathroom, what am I gonna do?’ or ‘Oh, someone’s watching,’ ‘I’m gonna go in my pants.’”

“Right, and then you wake up and in real life you actually have to pee.” 

“Yes!”

She shakes her head. “Yeah, everybody has that.”

Tony gestures wide. “Right! That’s the point I’m trying to make. Apropos of that, last night I dreamt we had a kid. It felt so real. We named him after your eccentric uncle, uh, what’s his name? Morgan! Morgan.”

“Right, so you woke up, and thought that we were….”

“Expecting,” Tony states. The dream had been so real, felt so real…

Pepper doesn’t say anything for a second, just looks at Tony, and the fact that she’s not immediately responding… “Wait, yes?”

Her lips tip into a smile that only gets wider. “Yeah. Yes.”

Tony feels his face go slack, his eyes go wide with surprise. He’s the one who asked but somehow didn’t really expect it to be true. _“Pepper.”_ Then he’s grabbing her, wrapping his arms around her, he thinks he’s babbling something but can’t even tell. 

Pepper laughs, a little helplessly, her hands warm against his back. “I was going to wait, just a bit longer. I was going to do something special, not tell you in the middle of the park.”

“Pep, god Pep, this is special,” Tony whispers, pulling her close so that he can bury his face in her shoulder. “Wouldn’t matter when or how you told me, it would be special.” He rocks her side to side a little, ignoring everything except the future in his arms. “We’re going to have a kid.”

“Yeah,” Pepper laughs. “Yeah, we are.”

“I’m going to be a dad.” Tony laughs, then the words hit him and he pulls back to stare wide-eyed at Pepper. “Oh god, I’m going to be someone’s dad.”

Running her fingers soothingly through his hair, Pepper smiles again and kisses his chin. “You’re going to be a great dad, Tony.”

He laughs, a little manic, happiness warring with a kernel of doubt. “I don’t know how to be a dad, Pep. I never had much of a role model in Howard.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Pepper soothes. “We both will. That’s kind of how it works.”

“Okay. Okay.” Tony strokes his hands over Pepper’s hair and down her ponytail, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. “I’m a genius. I can do this. I can figure out the dad thing. There’s some version of the universe where I’m a great dad, and hell, maybe it will turn out to be this one.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re a great dad in all of them, Tony.” She steps back enough that she can pat her hands on his chest. “Now, it might still be early days but I’m already noticing that this baby makes me need to pee all the time, so.” She points to the coffeeshop visible across the street from the park. “We’re stopping there, then heading home.”

“Anything you want,” Tony says, and he can’t stop smiling but for damn sure doesn’t want to.

He leans against the outside wall of the coffee shop while Pepper goes inside. It’s a nice day out, not too hot, and he just people-watches while he waits. He catches a few people looking at him with recognition, but none of them approach and he’s just fine with that. 

His thoughts slide about aimlessly, until suddenly he’s not on the sidewalk waiting for Pepper but in the middle of a street half-destroyed, with an enormous ring-shaped spaceship looming threateningly over the city. People are shouting, running away, and Tony’s facing down two aliens spewing threats that Tony only half understands. 

_“Hear me and rejoice,”_ the tallest intones. _“You are about to die at the hands of the Children of Thanos. Be thankful that your meaningless lives are now contributing to—”_

Tony jolts and comes back to himself when Pepper gently touches his arm. 

“Tony? You okay?” She takes a good look at his face and frowns sympathetically, stroking cool fingers across his forehead and brushing back his hair. “You’re drifting again. That hasn’t happened for a while.’

Tony exhales hard. “Yeah. I was kind of hoping I was done with that for good, but… Guess not.” He closes his eyes and tips his head back for a moment. Takes a couple deep breaths, then looks back at Pepper and pulls up a smile. “So, not great. But! I refuse to let that spoil today, so. We’re going to celebrate. Anything you want.”

“We’re going to talk about it,” Pepper warns softly. “But you’re right, not today.” 

They head back to the Tower, teasing back and forth as Tony suggests increasingly outlandish celebration activities and Pepper alternates between playing along and scolding him. In the end they opt for a quiet dinner in, just closeness and happiness and soft promises for the future. It’s pretty much perfect.

Something digs at him, though, peeking around the corners of his thoughts for days afterwards, and Tony being Tony, he can’t leave it alone. It takes him a while to put his finger on it, on which part of their conversation is bothering him. Yeah, the whole dad thing is it’s own pile of neuroses, but it’s not that.

He finally pins down the unsettled feeling to his comment about “some version of the universe.”

It’s just a throwaway line, an exaggeration of his feelings toward the future, but he finds himself buried back in the Infinity file reading through the notes and equations on multiverse physics, the ones that don’t make sense and never seem to go anywhere no matter how hard he works at them. 

It’s not that he doesn’t think there are multiple versions of himself in a multiverse of options. The math seems to support that part of things, at least in as much as Tony’s able to calculate and believe those calculations are correct. 

It’s that the multiverse is more like islands, where you’re all on your own and can’t see another shore across the water, even if you’re sure it’s there. You shouldn’t _ever_ see another shore, in fact; if you do, something is horribly wrong.

But that’s as far as he’s ever been able to get with these theories, and another two weeks buried in the lab isn’t changing that. It’s driving him up the wall, like there’s a solution just out of reach and he can’t quite see it, can’t quite reach it.

“I feel like I’m losing my mind, J,” he mutters, throwing the whiteboard marker across the room in a minor fit of frustration.

_“I’m reasonably certain that’s not the case, sir.”_

“I notice you aren’t saying ‘entirely certain,’ but thanks,” Tony mutters. It still feels a little like pity, but when it’s coming from JARVIS it doesn’t quite sting. He groans and flops tiredly into his chair, thumping his head against the back. “The nightmares are back, did I tell you?”

_“I did notice your recent disturbed sleep patterns and overall reluctance to leave the lab.”_

“Yup, well. That’s why.” He scrubs his hands across his face. “Don’t want to sleep, because when I do I’m there again. The desert. Fighting aliens. Getting hurt. All the greatest hits of the nineties and now. But there’s new ones, too. Like I needed more of this shit.” Not just the desert, not just the shit about aliens in Manhattan. But now he’s got some red-sand orange-sky disaster zone playing on repeat, and it’s not full of hordes of enemies but somehow the single enormous figure in gold armour that dominates it all feels like a greater threat than all of his other nightmares combined.

“I think the part that has me the most pissed off is that I thought they’d finally stopped,” Tony says, frustration lacing his voice. “It’d been a few years, only the regular type of bad dreams, instead of these damn recurring ones. But then _bam_ , right back in it.”

It’s the words half-remembered, though, that are all the more terrifying for their reasonable tone. _I offered a solution. I could simply snap my fingers…_

_The hardest choices require the strongest wills._

But the rest of the words Tony hears in his nightmares are lost, sliding away when he wakes up, being replaced by his own panting breaths and hoarse shouts.

He rolls his head against the chair-back until he can see the holo-display with the multiverse physics calculations all laid out, going nowhere. Half under his breath, he mutters, “What am I missing?”

But of course there’s no answer.

***

“Boo-yah, fifty points!” Clint crows before his arrow even hits the center bullseye on the target set against a stack of hay bales at the far end of the property. “That puts me at seven hundred.”

Natasha rolls her eyes good-naturedly in Clint’s direction before taking aim and firing her next bullet into the center of her own target’s bulls-eye. “Matched, seven hundred. Remind me why we do this, again?” Her tone is dry, but she’s smiling. It’s a gorgeous afternoon, sunny without a breeze—perfect for target practice, which is why they’re out here.

Clint laughs. “Why do we make it a competition when we both never miss?” He flips an arrow out of his quiver into the air, then grabs it, nocks it, and fires a shot over his shoulder all in one smooth motion. “Well, what’s life without whimsy.” He punctuates the distant thud of the arrow into the target with a wink. “Seven-fifty.”

“I concede,” Natasha laughs. “But only because I’m hungry and I can already see this going on for hours. Your prize for winning is that you get to go retrieve the targets.” She slides the clip out of her handgun and crouches to tuck both pieces back in the case at her feet. 

“That’s the way you Russians like to play it?” Clint teases as he unstrings his bow and puts it into its case, as well. 

She shrugs and puts on her most exaggerated Russian accent, the one that sounds like the villains from old action movies. “ _Da_. In communist utopia Russia, all are equal; even winners work.”

Clint is cackling before she even finishes, and after a second of trying to hold a straight face, she gives in and joins him. He’s still laughing as he jogs across the field toward their targets.

Letting out a last amused sigh, Natasha starts gathering up the rest of their equipment. By the time she’s done, Clint’s back with the rolled paper targets tucked under one arm, and between the two of them they pick up the rest and start carrying everything back to the house. 

Natasha studies the place objectively. Like the agent she is, or was. The farmhouse is big, with several bedrooms and a sprawling porch wrapping halfway around, creamy off-white siding looking soft in the sun. The property is even larger, several acres surrounded by forest. Very rural, very remote. It’s so _civilian_ that it startles her sometimes, when she thinks about it and it hits all over again that this is her life now. 

It’s also very secure, because neither she nor Clint would accept anything less.

But they are retired now, have been pretty effectively since that day in 2014. It took them a year to build new identities and find their way to owning this property, and a learning curve after that of trying to live like regular, normal, everyday civilians. Clint is better at it, but it makes sense; he did spend the first part of his life as a civilian, after all. It’s easier for both of them out here, though, in the privacy of this house, than it is in towns and cities. She still feels like she’s faking it, but there’s no one except Clint around to see if her mask slips.

They’re almost to the porch when Clint stumbles and drops the targets and his bow case, then trips all the way onto his knees in the dirt. 

“Clint!” Natasha crouches immediately at his side, popping the gun case open and sliding the clip back into her gun before standing to scan their surroundings, weapon at the ready. “What happened, are you hit?” Nothing stands out to her, no assailants in sight, no signs of anyone hidden. No alarm from her phone to indicate their security perimeter has been breached. “Barton, report.”

Clint looks wildly up at Natasha and she gets a glimpse of his panicked expression before he’s stumbling to his feet and running a few yards away from the house. “Lila. Lila!”

Natasha freezes. Clint spins her way briefly and she notices now that his eyes are vague, staring past her into the middle distance as he searches around the house and porch. “Nathaniel! Cooper, Laura!”

She knows those names, recognizes them as the ones Clint says in his sleep. The family he dreams about. Except this one seems like a waking nightmare. Tucking her gun into her waistband, Natasha jogs across the grass to Clint. 

“Honey? Boys? Where are you?” He’s still shouting, frantic now, and it’s all she can do to catch hold of his shoulders and get him to look at her.

“Clint, look at me. Look at me, you’re dreaming. I don’t know what’s happening, but you’re okay.” He tries to turn, to move away, but she holds fast and gives him a little shake. “Clint, come back to me.”

He slumps against her, and then down onto his knees. She follows him down, still holding his shoulders to keep him upright. He’s still speaking, and she makes out a repeated, “They’re gone, they’re gone.”

Natasha still has one eye on their surroundings, but they don’t seem to be under threat by anything aside from Clint’s waking dream, and as the battle-ready adrenaline fades she recognizes a tide of other emotions—fear, sadness, anger—that don’t appear to be coming to her from anything here, but rather from somewhere else. She tries to tune them out to focus on Clint, but it’s difficult. 

They kneel there on the ground, she’s not sure how long. Finally, whatever wave of emotion that swamped them both seems to fade. Clint breathes out a deep breath and finally blinks, looking at Natasha like he’s just waking up—which she thinks he is. 

“Hey, you back?” she asks quietly. 

“What the fuck,” Clint groans. He rubs at the center of his chest, as though it aches. “God, Nat. I felt that I was with them, and then they were gone, and I know they died. I feel it everywhere, how can they be dead when they only exist in my dreams?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha says.

“Ugh, is this what you felt like that time in the apartment?” Clint gets his feet under him and stands, but hunches over with his hands braced on his knees for a few breaths. 

Natasha rubs a soothing hand down his back. “Probably. Tired, confused, and really upset about someone who isn’t real?” Clint nods, straightening.

He looks around with tired, pained eyes, and wipes dampness off his cheeks. “I don’t know what that was, Nat, but it feels like they’re really gone. Like I won’t even dream about them anymore.”

“The dreams have always come back before,” Natasha says, and it’s true. Between the two of them they rarely go more than a few months without one of the recurring dreams and nightmares raising its head. Clint’s dream of a family, Natasha’s dreams of teammates and missions, people and places she knows but never recognizes, can never recall the details of afterwards. 

“I don’t know, Nat.” Clint slowly picks up his gear and moves toward the house again. “This time felt like the end.”

They don’t speak much the rest of the day, moving around the house like they’re the ghosts, and not the people in their dreams. When they go to bed they lay side by side, not touching, both pretending to sleep but neither doing so convincingly. Natasha is caught on Clint’s words, and while the tide of emotion and sorrow that rolled over them in the yard has passed, the echoes linger and she still feels the sting of it deep in her chest.

She abandons the pretense of sleep and rolls toward Clint, sliding her arms around him and feeling his embrace in turn. They still don’t sleep, but sharing it is better. 

Because Clint is right. Something ended today, she’s just not sure what.

***

Steve unslings the shield from his back and sits to strap himself into the seat in back of the quinjet. The ramp retracts and the doors close behind the rest of the team, and the engines fire to life a second later. 

Coulson steps away from the comms console as the quinjet takes off. “Sounds like things were a little difficult on the way out.” He arches his eyebrow dryly. It’s not entirely common these days for Coulson to head missions himself, though it’s not all that rare, either. Coulson’s always been the type to keep close to the important missions, and he likes to keep his hand in the game, as it were.

Steve just sighs. “You could say that.” He pulls the shield across his knees and starts inspecting it for damage. As always, while the paint is scored and scorched in places from bullet impacts, the metal beneath is smooth and undamaged. He’ll have to go back to Fitz, again, and get him to strip and repaint, again. Thankfully the kid’s a good sport about it, and seems to have taken it as a personal challenge the last few years to try and develop a paint or coating that will stand up to Steve’s missions.

“I always think it’s too bad we can’t get more of this. Vibranium,” Steve says idly, tapping his fingers against the surface of the shield. “Selfishly I’d want another piece of equipment for myself, but really, think of what we could do with protective armor, or...hell, I don’t even know, I’m not an engineer.” 

“Just our luck that instead this is the rarest metal on earth, I guess,” Coulson replies. “The only country ever known to have any is Wakanda.”

Steve’s fingers slow their movements against the shield. The name slams into his mind and a prickling shiver races up his spine and the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he says, but the words sound hollow and far away to his ears. “I know. I remember Howard saying the same thing…” He trails off, distracted, and looks toward the front of the quinjet. Unbuckles himself and stands to stride toward the cockpit until he can see out the windshield.

Some part of him knows that they’re in open air somewhere over the eastern seaboard, but Steve sees sprawling savannah plains flashing past below, and a tropical mountainside looming in front of them. The mountain draws closer and closer until suddenly they are somehow passing through it in a blur of green and brown, and emerging to the view of a colourful and far-futuristic city unlike anything Steve has seen before, a jewel set in the middle of the jungle.

Then he blinks and it’s gone, in its place the familiar geometry of the New York skyline, all straight lines and grey glass and steel. 

“Cap?” Coulson says from behind Steve, in a tone that suggests it’s not the first time. “Everything okay?”

Blinking hard, Steve gives his head a little shake. _What the hell was that?_ “I’m fine, Phil.” But he doesn’t feel fine, he feels...off balance. As though he’s not quite in the right place, not where he’s supposed to be.

He stays standing behind the pilot’s seat, watching their approach to the city. The last time he felt like this, experienced this kind of waking dream or vision, it was more like a nightmare. By contrast, this was practically pleasant—the fact that he’s seeing things notwithstanding..

After all, he’s never done anything about it before; he’s not about to start now. 

Unlike the last time, however, today it’s as though once his mind has started on this path, it can’t stop. The rest of the flight and landing at the SHIELD headquarters is uneventful, but as he strides down the ramp from the quinjet he finds himself no longer in the SHIELD bunker but instead striding across an open landing pad toward—

_Bucky_.

It’s another version of Bucky he’s never seen, but one that is closer to the man he remembers from before the War than Steve has seen in the decades since then. Striding relaxed and smiling toward Steve, looking clean and well fed and healthy. Long hair shiny and metal arm gleaming in black and gold.

_A semi-stable, hundred-year-old man,_ Bucky says through his grin, and steps right up to Steve and pulls him into an embrace. It feels like the first time; it feels like coming home. 

It’s been so long since Steve’s seen Bucky, since he’s seen his lifelong friend, and he forgets himself for a moment, forgets that he is only seeing this when it isn’t real, and he says quietly, “How’ve you been, Buck?”

_Not bad, for the end of the world,_ Bucky replies with a cocky grin, and Steve can only helplessly grin back.

In the next second he snaps back to reality and it’s all gone, of course. No Bucky, leaving Steve standing in the middle of SHIELD’s landing pad with one arm raised in front of him, the bustle of agents and techs a hive of activity around him. A few cast him curious looks for standing motionless and likely for speaking to Bucky—to himself—out loud. Lowering his arm, he turns away and heads to the locker room to shower and change back into his civilian clothes. 

He’s scheduled for a few days off before his next mission, and he’s even more grateful for the break since the sudden reappearance of Bucky has now thrown him off kilter. All he wants to do is go home and wallow in it for a while.

He’s worried, though, if he’s being honest with himself. He’s never had two of these moments so close together, or at least not since the days before the War when he used to see and speak with Bucky almost daily. But in those days it was _just_ Bucky, not seeing a whole different environment surrounding him.

He makes his way home without incident, at least, and by the time he’s closing the door to his apartment he’s exhausted from the tension of waiting to see if it will happen again. 

Part of him wants nothing more than to go to bed, but he knows he’s too wired to attempt to sleep. Instead he grabs the bottle of whiskey Coulson had given him as a housewarming gift when he moved into this place last year, and slumps into the big chair by the window.

It’s a nice apartment, with a nice view. He likes it well enough, but today feels a deep longing for the tiny, bare tenement he lived in before the war. Feels a mix of nostalgia and wistfulness for that place where he used to imagine Bucky nearly every day, spoke to him without fear that others would overhear and have him sent to the nuthouse. Where he could pretend to himself, quietly in the evenings, that Bucky was real.

He pours a second tumbler of whiskey, barely having noticed drinking the first. Not that it’ll do anything; he could drink the whole bottle a dozen times over and not feel anything. 

As he sits there, thoughts idling, he starts to feel a buzz beneath his skin, enough to put him on edge despite his tiredness. It makes him feel the need to move, to do something. He sets down the tumbler and stands, with the vague idea to go for a run or to the weight bench in the other room.

But when he turns away from the window, it’s as though he’s stepped through a door into the middle of a battle. Dry grass and dirt underfoot, hundred of soldiers fighting around him. Not the War, not the Front, but not a mission either. Alien creatures grey-black and six-legged race across the ground like a flood, and Steve is fighting alongside an army of men and women and a few other aliens apparently, all of them fighting desperately. Fighting as though this is their last chance, the last hope. 

He slashes an alien with the edge of the shield—no, not the shield, but a sharp-edged black gauntlet that he can use the same way—then slams another aside with his fist. He turns at the sound of machine gun fire beside him and sees Bucky a dozen feet away, firing with ruthless precision from the center of a growing ring of dead aliens, metal arm glinting black and gold in the sunlight.

Steve dropkicks a charging alien and rolls back to his feet on the rebound. He tries to fight his way over to Bucky, but wave after wave of creatures keep getting between them and he can’t seem to make any headway. He loses sight of Bucky beneath a pile of the creatures and screams out, redoubling his efforts to fight free of the onslaught.

The fiery streak of pain blazing through his hand and up his arm pulls him back to himself, back to his empty apartment. He pulls his fist out of the shattered brick of the wall, stares at the blood on his skin from the sliced flesh and broken knuckles that are already healing themselves. 

He should feel crazy, and on some level he supposes he does. He’s apparently hallucinating, or falling into all-consuming daydreams, and the fact that it’s happened three times in a short order today is...concerning. But mostly he’s just torn between exhaustion and a desire to go back to that hallucinated fight if it means he can see Bucky again. 

With a sigh he pours himself another double-shot of whiskey, tosses it back, and goes to wash the blood off his knuckles. The cuts are already healed, and for all the years he’s lived with the serum and all the injuries healed, it’s still somehow jarring to see smooth, unscarred skin where his brain thinks a wound should be. He’s not sure how long he stands there, but finally turns away from the sink and goes to clean up the bits of shattered brick littering the floor. 

He spends the rest of the evening staring out the window and working his way through the bottle of whiskey. Even if it doesn’t do anything, he hopes the act will somehow settle his thoughts. But when he finally gives up and goes to bed to sleep, only nightmares greet him.

Another fight, another battle, another war. Steve battles a giant, like no one he’s seen before. Armoured all in gold, three times Steve’s size, and bearing a thick golden gauntlet glowing with the light of gemstones. The sight of it gives Steve a visceral, soul-deep feeling of terror. _This is the end of everything._

Then he’s in a clearing, turning at the sound of Bucky’s voice. _Steve?_

Except even as he turns, Bucky is disintegrating, turning to dust in the air, and Steve can’t make a sound in his horror but inside he’s screaming, screaming—

He’s screaming out into his empty apartment, sweating and aching with loss, tears on his face and Bucky’s name on his tongue.

***

None of them can know, of course. But it’s the last time, for five years, that any of them have those hallucinations, or nightmares, or dreams.


	4. Part 3: A Posteriori

# Part 3: A Posteriori

## 2023

Tony stands surrounded by red. Red sky, red earth, mountains of rusty debris. Dust in the air smothering a distant, pale sun. He’s wearing an Iron Man suit, the one he’s always aimed for, the ideal. Smooth and flexible, red and gold. 

“Oh yeah, you’re much more of a ‘Thanos,’” a wry voice says, and Tony turns to see a dark-haired man facing the purple giant from all of Tony’s nightmares. _So this is a nightmare, too?_

“I take it the Maw is dead,” Thanos says. “This day extracts a heavy toll. Still, he accomplished his mission.”

“You may regret that. He brought you face to face with the Master of the Mystic Arts.” 

“And where do you think he brought you?” Thanos asks. Tony looks around again, and realizes that the debris isn’t random. It’s the remains of buildings and spaceships. The ruins of a civilization.

“Let me guess. Your home?” The dark-haired guy, master of the mystic whatever, is just sitting there. Tony needs to warn him, to get him to move. He knows what this alien is capable of, but he can’t seem to make his body move. 

The landscape around them starts to change as Thanos raises his arm, the golden gauntlet with glowing inlaid jewels flashing in the light. Like a hologram, images of green plants and intact buildings overlay their surroundings. “It was,” Thanos begins with a terrible smile. “And it was beautiful. But Titan was like most planets. Too many mouths, and not enough to go around. When we faced extinction, I offered a solution.”

“Genocide.”

Thanos’s expression becomes pitying. “But at random, dispassionate. Fair to rich and poor alike. They called me a madman, and what I predicted came to pass.” The images fade until only the ruins remain. 

The response is rife with sarcasm. “Congratulations, you’re a prophet.”

“I’m a survivor.”

“Who wants to murder trillions.”

Thanos shakes his head, raising his gauntleted hand. “WIth all six stones, I could simply snap my fingers and they would cease to exist. I call that mercy.”

Tony feels a scream of rage, of fear, swelling in his throat but he can’t seem to let it loose, then suddenly he’s flailing against the sheet, covering his eyes against the early morning sunlight streaming through the bedroom window. Chest heaving with panting breaths, he wrestles his way out of the bedding, staggers to his feet and leans against the window. Stares out at the blue sky and the city spread out below, specks of vehicles and people moving along the streets. His hand shakes as he presses it against the glass. He rests his forehead next to his hand.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” he mutters to himself. 

“Tony?” Pepper calls out as she comes through the door. “You’re going to miss breakfast.”

It takes him too long to lift his head. Pepper frowns as she crosses the room to stand in front of him. She runs her fingers across his forehead. “You’re sweating.” She catches sight of the rumpled bedding, sheets half on the floor, and her expression softens. “Nightmares again?”

He nods slowly. Reminds himself that it was just a nightmare. One in the river of nightmares that haunt his life. Hell, he’s even pretty sure he’s had this one before, though not quite so clearly.

Pepper cups his face with both hands and presses a soft kiss to his jaw. “Come have breakfast, you’ll feel better.”

***

He tries to concentrate on his breakfast, on Morgan and Pepper, but the dregs of the dream won’t leave his mind. His thoughts chase one another around and around. _They would all cease to exist._

“Sonovabitch,” Tony mutters, dropping his fork. “It didn’t work the way he thought.”

Morgan giggles. “You said a bad word.”

But Tony barely hears her, or Pepper’s surprised exclamation. The realization swirling up from his thoughts swamps him. “He knew what it did, he knew how to use it, but not how it worked.”

“Tony? What are you talking about?”

“The monster from my nightmares.” He shoves away from the table, knocking over his glass and the chair in his hurry. The lab, he needs the lab. Needs to work this out before he loses the idea. 

Pepper’s voice calling out, “Tony? What in the world?” follows him from the terrace but he doesn’t stop to reassure her, will apologize to Morgan and Pepper both later. But the answers are closer than ever, he’s right on the edge of making sense of the questions that have plagued his life for decades. 

“JARVIS, open the Infinity file,” he’s shouting before he’s even halfway down to the lab. 

The holoscreens are up and showing an array of all the files by the time Tony enters the room, and he comes to a stop in front of the displays, eyes darting over each until he finds the one with calculations for the shitty multiverse theory that he’s never been able to resolve. No matter how many times he works the numbers, he ends up with paired but non-identical results. But what if that’s because there’s an error in the initial equation, one that introduced two lines from a single point…

Time is linear to human experience, but spacetime is a whole. No directionality…

 _Singularity_ . Change the right point in a system and you change the _whole_ system.

“Shit, goddamn. He didn’t know how those things worked, not really.” Tony stares at the equations in front of him, at the graphical representation now showing what was always there except that Tony had started from the wrong assumption, that there was only one line. “JARVIS, he reset the system from the inside. We’re in some kind of altered version of reality because some giant purple asshole did the equivalent of not reading the instructions on the box. He just plugged it in and turned it on.”

_“Sir?”_

“Just a metaphor, J, and a bad one,” Tony waves it away. “But I think this is the key. All the shit that doesn’t line up, maybe it’s just that it doesn’t line up _here_.” 

But where to start?

“Can’t start at the beginning, because I don’t know when that is, or where and when this started,” Tony says to himself. But if he looks at it from a different premise… He stares at the twin lines of the multiverse equation. “J, what if the nightmares and dreams aren’t really dreams, but a...window into another reality. Like a memory of something that _should_ have happened, but didn’t.”

_“That supposition goes against all current cosmological and physics theories in regards to multiverse theory, Sir.”_

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Tony waves it away. “But we’re playing ‘What If?’ here, J.” He gestures with one hand and brings the display showing his notes on Captain America forward. “And if we’re assuming that the dreams and other stuff that doesn’t line up is because I’m remembering something that never happened, then this was the first time.”

He moves to the side and flicks his fingers to move the Captain America file into place. “J, give me a timeline. Summer of ‘79, I’m in Manhattan home from school, and Rogers is stateside and in New York. I thought it was a fever dream the week I was sick, seeing someone in Howard’s office and thinking they should be dead. Now I think that the meeting was real, that it was Rogers, but that the ‘you should be dead’ part is a reflection from that alternate reality window.”

_“Sir, I feel compelled to point out that you’re making a significant assumption.”_

“Maybe, but right now that’s all I’ve got,” Tony replies. “If I’m wrong, I think things will prove that out pretty quickly. But if I’m right…”

If he’s right, then reality isn’t anything like what they all believe it to be.

He scrolls through the Infinity file looking for the next thing… “2008. That Director Coulson guy from SHIELD came around after the shit with Obadiah. Asked about the suit and the whole Iron Man thing, but never came back for anything else.” Tony expands the view to look at some of the notes, and realizes. “That’s when the dreams started. Not the ones about the desert, but the other ones. The ones about fighting aliens, and being swallowed by space.” 

Those dreams had been vague for years, unlike the ones of the desert that were always clear. But now that Tony’s looking at the Infinity file from a different perspective, it’s clear that those non-desert nightmares were the beginnings of the ones that began to haunt him a few years later. The ones that eventually became dreams of fighting beside others, of flying through a hole in space, and nightmares of watching people die.

He slid the 2008 file onto the timeline, and pulled up what Pepper teased him by calling it his “dream diary” even though it was pretty much the truth. Not that he dug into anything or bothered with deep analysis, but he’s kept a list of the worst of the nightmares—when he had them, and descriptions of what they were about. 

The one in 2012 was one of the worst, the one about aliens the size of whales and attackers pouring out of a hole in the sky, vicious and a shade of blue that he’s never seen a match for elsewhere. He couldn’t sleep for a week afterwards, when every time he closed his eyes his vision filled with that terrifying blue light. 

Then there was 2015 and the wild dreams about a hoard of silver robots speaking and fighting in unison like bizarre metal marionettes. Then nightmares about the giant in violet and gold, over and over. 

When a half-dozen dates are marked with Tony’s dream notes, he steps back and studies the timeline. “I need something more than my own bad dreams, J,” he says, and it’s mostly just to think out loud. JARVIS has always been good for that. “Even if I get the feeling they aren’t really dreams, as such. I need to narrow down the commonalities.”

 _“A great deal of your notes contain partial descriptions of other people,”_ JARVIS says. _“I’ve compiled and cross-referenced what I can find.”_ A new screen populates with grouped text.

“Son of a bitch,” Tony swears, recognition slamming through him at one of the faces. _Tall man, blond hair. Dressed in blue._ “This is no longer a coincidence, J.” He flicks his finger to bring up a photo from the HYDRA data dump file.

Captain fucking America.

And if one of the people from his dreams is real, maybe the others are, too. Only one of the other descriptions has enough detail to work with, however—that of a redheaded woman, extremely acrobatic from what Tony remembers seeing in his dream, always dressed in black. “See what you can find on a person matching this description, J.”

 _“While the description is not in particular enough to positively identify a single individual,”_ JARVIS says, _“I have found one likely candidate for a match from the SHIELD data dump in 2014.”_ Another photo appears in the holoscreen, showing a SHIELD ID photo next to a more candid image, both showing a pretty redhead with a deceptively bland expression.

Agent Natasha Romanoff.

“Black Widow,” Tony says.

 _“That is correct, Sir,”_ Jarvis replies, which is when Tony realizes that he spoke without thinking and without reading her file.

_“Agent Romanoff worked for SHIELD for sixteen years, prior to which she was a KGB operative known as Black Widow, trained by an organization known as the Red Room. Specialties were infiltration and assassination. During her tenure at SHIELD she was one of their top agents, working directly with Director Coulson and an agent known as Clint Barton. Agents Romanoff and Barton are also responsible for the 2014 destruction of the helicarriers and the Triskelion during the uprooting of HYDRA from SHIELD, as well as the data dump in which this information was found.”_

“Add that to 2014 on the timeline,” Tony instructs, “along with any other corroborated dates regarding Romanoff from the data dump. And mark down what you can from Captain America’s file from the search I had you run years ago.” He points a finger at the one he wants. The display populates with more marks until Tony is staring at a few dozen points, where once it’s laid out becomes very apparent that all three of them—Tony, Rogers, and Romanoff—very conspicuously come close to each other in time or location but never quite overlap more than a potential few times. Tony seeing Rogers as a kid. Romanoff starting to work at SHIELD when Rogers was still involved. Like they all brushed right up against each other but never quite engaged. 

Marked in green are the other bits, the dreams and things that aren’t real. For a given value of real, at this point, Tony thinks. 

_“It appears that both Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff are something of a common denominator,”_ JARVIS says. 

“They certainly seem to show up the most,” Tony agrees. “It still doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know them, but the weirdest of the weird thoughts all seem to involve them. Maybe it’s time we all meet face to face. Find some contact numbers for me, J. We’re gonna throw a party.”

***

Natasha's phone rings with the sound assigned to unknown numbers, and she reflexively looks over at the display. Sure enough, _Unknown Number_ flashes on the screen. 

She's about to ignore it, except the letters blink out while the phone keeps ringing, to be replaced by the letters, _JARVIS_.

Who the hell is this?

It's probably just a telemarketer, but after a minute when the ringing should have stopped and instead keeps going, she sets down her book and just watches the phone.

"You're not going to answer that?" Clint says, distracted as he comes into the room carrying his bow and quiver. "I'm going to be out back. Been feeling rusty." He peers over her shoulder at the phone as he walks past. "Who's Jarvis?"

"I don't know," Natasha hums. "The display said ‘Unknown Number’ at first, but then it changed." 

"And it's still going. That's...strange." Clint nudges the phone a few inches across the tabletop. 

Natasha picks it up and doesn't answer yet, but taps over to the security panel. "Nothing is flagging as a hack." 

Clint pulls out his own phone and checks the house security feeds. "Nothing around the property." Natasha meets Clint's eyes, then shrugs. Whatever this is, the two of them can handle it. 

Tapping to answer, she puts the call on speaker but doesn't say anything. 

After a few seconds of silence, a cultured British voice comes through the speaker. _"Good afternoon. Am I speaking with Agent Romanoff?"_

She exchanges a look with Clint. Nothing of their current covers should have been traceable to the name Romanoff, her time at SHIELD, or this cellphone. "I think you have the wrong number." 

_"It seems not,"_ the voice replies. _"Can I assume that Agent Barton is with you."_

They both straighten and Natasha slips the knife hidden beneath the edge of the tabletop into her hand while Clint slings his quiver over his shoulder and nocks an arrow in one smooth motion. Scanning the room and checking out the windows, Natasha lifts the phone near her face again. "Who is this?"

Another voice came through the speaker. "Hey there, spy kids. Don't mind JARVIS, his sense of nuance isn't always on point."

"Who the hell are you?" Natasha demands. 

"Well that's the thing, we don't know each other except maybe we do, or we were supposed to. It's Tony Stark, by the way, and you are the former SHIELD agents Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton."

Clint’s eyebrows arch upward in surprise. They both know who Tony Stark is; it’s hard to miss the guy when he’s been all over the news so often with his whole “Iron Man” schtick. Natasha occasionally thought he looked familiar, but always chalked it up to the fact that Stark’s name and face really are everywhere—especially in the intelligence world. The KGB lived in awe and envy of Stark Industries’ military tech back in the day.

But there’s no way that Tony Stark should know the names of two retired intelligence agents living under about three layers of cover and fake identities.

Natasha stays quiet, though, and sure enough Stark keeps talking. “Cards on the table, I know this is going to sound weird, but I think you might have answers I’ve been looking for and I just might have some answers for you. First question: I’ve never met you, but have you ever met me?”

Natasha holds back the strange, instinctive urge to say yes, because she knows it’s not true. She’d know if she’d ever met him face to face. “You just said we’ve never met.” Which is an admission that Stark has her identity correct, but the guy already seems pretty damn certain, so she’s not really giving anything up. “What’s this about, Stark?”

There’s a long, obviously dramatic pause—she rolls her eyes at Clint—then Stark says, “The world feels out of alignment, doesn’t it? Like someone kicked it over sideways and didn’t put it back quite the way it was before.”

Natasha and Clint are both silent, but this time it’s from an electric chill up the spine. 

“You have dreams,” Tony says, voice low and very certain. “Of people you’re sure you know but can’t remember. Events that don’t match up to what you’ve experienced. You dream of aliens and a hole in the sky and people turning to dust in front of your eyes.”

Clint’s hand grasps her shoulder, and Natasha realizes she’s hunched over the phone and leaning hard against the edge of the table. She’s shaking. It’s a weakness but the tremors won’t stop. Clint’s face is pale and wide-eyed, because Stark just named their nightmares out of nowhere.

“How do you know?” She barely manages to get the words out between clenched teeth. 

“I know because those are my dreams, too.”

***

“I want to be clear on what just happened,” Clint says, twirling an arrow between his fingers. Natasha watches him out of the corner of her eye, but mostly gazes out the window across the field behind the house. This farmhouse has been their sanctuary since they left SHIELD nearly a decade ago, and the fact that Stark found them here, well. She can’t say she’s a fan.

Clint flipped the arrow up into the air. “Tony Stark, actual good-guy, green-energy billionaire tracked us down with his super-powered AI in order to tell us that he thinks we’re all having the same dreams-that-aren’t-dreams, and to invite us to Stark Tower in Manhattan.”

“That does seem to be the case,” Natasha says. Her eyes are still on her phone, studying her reflection in the glass over the blank screen.

“I don’t think it’s a hoax or anything,” Clint muses. “For one thing, I don’t know what the hell Tony fucking Stark would want from either of us. He never had much to do with SHIELD aside from a handful of consultations on tech for Coulson.”

“I can’t deny being...curious.” It’s hard to admit, but true. From what she knows about Stark, which is largely what’s public knowledge anyway, he wouldn’t bother with them unless he was pretty damn sure that he is correct in whatever he’s thinking. And he’s smart enough not to give them everything, but to share just enough to catch their attention. 

When she thinks about it, she resents the intrusion into this place that has been their sanctuary for so many years. Most spies don’t retire; they have a mission go wrong, they miss their shot, and then they’re dead. But it’s equally true that the game is never really over for people like her.

She looks at the knife still held in one hand. “And it’s not like we wouldn’t be able to handle whatever shit he might try to pull.”

After a few minutes, Clint quietly says, “You think we should go.”

Natasha tilts the knife until the blade edge catches the light. “I think we need answers.”

***

Steve’s phone buzzes and he fishes it out of his pocket with one hand, juggling his keys with the other. The display reads _JARVIS_ , and he pauses outside his apartment door.

Odd. Seeing the name makes him smile a little, though. He’s only ever met one person in real life with that name, Howard’s butler and Peggy’s erstwhile partner-in-crime from the years shortly after the War. Edwin Jarvis. 

Shit, he hasn’t thought about Jarvis in years, time having blunted the sorrow of when the man passed away in the late 80’s. But thinking the name brings to mind some of the stories Peggy used to tell about the missions Jarvis helped her on. 

Obviously that’s not who’s calling him now, but Steve answers out of pure curiosity. 

“Rogers speaking.”

A British-accented voice through the line says, _“Good afternoon, Captain Rogers. If you will stay on the line, I’ll connect you.”_

“Uh, sure?” Steve replies, caught off guard at just how much like the real Edwin Jarvis this voice sounds. Not what he was expecting.

“Rogers. This is Tony Stark.” A new voice speaks and Steve drops his keys in surprise. 

He crouches down to swipe them back off the floor. “No shit? Howard’s son?” He unlocks the door and enters, kicking it shut with one foot. 

“The one and only,” Stark replies grandly. “Billionaire, genius, former-playboy, philanthropist. I’d be flattered that you’ve heard of me, but everyone has heard of me.” The words are egotistical, but Steve can hear the humorous self-deprecation in Tony’s voice.

“Well you sure sound like Howard’s kid,” Steve teases back, letting his own humour colour his voice. “Certainly not who I expected to hear from today, of course.”

“Not what I thought I’d be doing when I woke up this morning, either,” Tony said. “But I ran into a question that I suspect you might have the answer to, and if I’m right then I might have some answers for questions you don’t even know to ask. I know we’ve never met—”

“Ah, we have met, actually,” Steve interrupts. “Although you were pretty young, so I doubt you remember.”

Silence from Tony for a long minute, until Steve wonders if the call dropped. 

Finally, Tony mumbles, “Well that answers that,” in an aside that sounds mostly directed at himself before he speaks directly to Steve. “Listen, you’ve been having weird dreams about aliens and shit, right? Probably for years, if not your whole life. Well I’ve been dreaming the same things, and I don’t think they’re dreams. I think they are supposed to be real.”

Startled, Steve says, “Not dreams, but—” before cutting his words off. _Bucky_. His whole life, something that felt real but wasn’t real. And there had been dreams, of course. The fact that Howard’s kid would call him out of the blue, and ask about experiencing strange dreams, well. Steve doesn’t believe in coincidences.

“Come to the Tower tomorrow,” Tony says. “There’s something I want to show you, and a couple people I think you should meet.”

“Sure.” Steve hangs up and stares at his phone, unsettled. He’s not sure what Tony’s going on about, but he is curious to finally meet Howard’s son for real. He’s not entirely certain why he hasn’t spent any time with Tony before. A lot of years spent on missions or overseas, he supposes. But still. 

But that’s not where his mind lingers the rest of the day. He does his best not to think too much—to hope too strongly—in response to Tony’s words. _I think they are supposed to be real._

Because all his heart hears is, _Bucky was supposed to be real._

***

Steve’s phone buzzes in his hand as he steps through the doors of Stark Tower. He glances at the display and sees _JARVIS_ , so swipes to answer. “Rogers here.”

_“Good afternoon, Captain Rogers. If you would proceed to the last elevator on the right, I will direct you to the lab.”_

The call disconnects and Steve slips his phone back in his pocket as he crosses the wide foyer toward the elevator bank. It’s busier than he expects, with a crowd of people moving through the space. As he approaches the elevator he notices it has a separate button panel, but before he can press anything the door slides open in front of him.

The ride is fast and nearly silent, and as the elevator comes to a stop JARVIS’ voice comes from somewhere above him. _“The hallway to your left will take you to the lab where you will find Mr. Stark.”_

“Uh, thanks,” Steve says, because it feels rude not to reply, even to a voice over an elevator speaker. 

He heads down the hall as directed, and around the first corner he comes to a stretch of interior windows that look into what must be Tony’s lab, a sprawling space that looks to be half the length of the Tower’s width and is full of tech and equipment that Steve has no name for.

There are two other people already in the hallway, a slender redhead and a stocky blond, who turn to Steve when he comes into view. Time seems to slow and Steve freezes as he gets a look at them. They both stiffen and stare back at him with surprised expressions. 

Steve recognizes them, but his mind supplies a strange double memory—not just the memory of watching them from the observation room at SHIELD some twenty five years ago, but also the sudden realization that they are two of the faces from his dreams full of unnamed, half-familiar people fighting side by side against aliens and monsters.

Black Widow and Agent Barton. Steve rarely dealt with agents up close in those days, since once it became clear in the 70s that he wasn’t aging naturally, Peggy and SHIELD had made sure to obscure Steve’s identity and kept his strategist role to the shadows. 

Why had he never put together their identities with the figures he used to see in dreams?. Even given the fact that he only ever saw them at a distance, seeing them now, their faces so familiar, it seems obvious. 

He comes to a stop a few feet away. Romanoff and Barton are both tense, though Steve isn’t much better. He nods. “Agent Romanoff. Agent Barton.”

The names feel awkward in his mouth, too familiar but also strange, as though he’s using the wrong name. As though he should be calling them something else. Something more friendly.

“Not exactly agents anymore,” Romanoff says. She’s already brought her expression back under control, but it’s too late; she was as surprised and confused as Steve, which makes him wonder whether she’s been having strange dreams too.

Barton’s eyes go even wider. “Holy shit. I know your face, you’re Captain America. Except shouldn’t you be like a hundred years old by now?”

A voice interrupts before Steve has a chance to respond. “Excellent, everybody’s here!” and Steve recognizes Tony’s voice from yesterday’s phone call. The man himself leans in the doorway to the lab, giving them a slightly manic grin. “Captain. Spy kids,” he adds with a wink in the direction of Romanoff and Barton. “Let’s get this party started,” he adds and disappears back into the lab.

Steve exchanges a look with Barton and Romanoff before preceding them into the room. The question rolls through his mind that always crops up when a Stark is involved. _What have I gotten myself into?_

Stark’s standing in the middle of a bewildering array of blue holo-displays, arms outstretched. “Welcome to my humble lab in the middle of Manhattan.” Toni’s smile is a bit wild, and does little to hide the shadowed eyes and pale face that indicate a sleepless night. Possibly several sleepless nights, if Steve is any judge

Romanoff crosses her arms and leans against the edge of a workbench in studied nonchalance. “Why are we here, Stark?” 

Steve tracks Barton’s progress around the room where he appears to poke curiously around Tony’s equipment. But Steve catches the subtle signs that Barton is surveying the room for threats and exits. Eyes seeking out corners and doorways, assessing risks.

“So many reasons,” Stark says. His hands move quickly as he manipulates the displays. “Do you want the technical explanation, or the TL:DR?”

“Whatever gets you to the point fastest,” Romanoff replies dryly. 

Tony claps his hands together. “So I’m pretty sure we’re in a version of reality that’s been changed by a giant purple alien space tyrant, and that we’ve all been having dreams that are actually us remembering events from our original reality.”

Steve blinks at Tony, then at all the screens of information surrounding them. “Maybe you’d better give us the long version.”

***

The detailed explanation Tony gives is not any less confusing. The too-technical explanation of multiverses and alternate realities largely goes over Steve’s head, and he has no idea how Tony keeps all the data on these screens straight in his mind. 

But when Tony explains the timeline with dates marked where he’s had strange experiences—the same waking nightmares of aliens and battles in 2012 and 2018, and his description of meeting Steve as a child that he thought wasn’t real—Steve feels ice crawl up his spine.

Because yes, he’s seen the same things in his dreams, aliens and monsters and a portal in the sky. And from the looks on Romanoff’s and Barton’s faces, they have too.

For all that it feels like too much of a coincidence but somehow true, it also sounds insane.

“This sounds insane,” Barton says, and Steve startles a bit at hearing the echo of his own thoughts. 

“Oh, it definitely does,” Tony agrees. “But the fact that all four of us have had the same experiences? The same dreams at the same time? That moves us a lot farther away from insane, and closer to Occam’s Razor.”

“Are we here just so you can tell us this?” Steve asks. 

Tony shakes his head. “Nope. You’re here to fill in the gaps, and if I’m right, then you’re here because if we can figure out what happened and how, then maybe we can fix it.” He points to the timeline display. “These are just the points we have in common, but because these exist I’m sure that there’s more. Memories that aren’t about events we—well, alternate we—were all involved in.”

Barton and Romanoff don’t look any more eager to dig into their pasts than Steve is, but the refrain scratching at the back of his mind pushes him forward. _What if Bucky is supposed to be real? What if all this is the reason why?_

But he doesn’t want to get bogged down in those thoughts, that _hope_ , so Steve shifts to practicalities. “So what are you—are we—looking for?”

“These are the things I came up with that were in my dreams,” Tony says. “And you three just confirmed that you dreamed the same. I’m looking for information, anything you can remember. People, places, objects. With enough, maybe we can find answers. Figure out exactly who changed our reality, and how, and why.”

“And then what?” Natasha asks.

Finally, this, Steve knows the answer to. It’s always been his answer. “Then we fix things. We make it right.”

***

They’re up all night adding points to the timeline, and it’s as though the more they share, the more they remember other bits and pieces. But when they’re sitting in the lab as the morning light slides in through the exterior windows, Steve points to two memories, one his and one Tony’s. Both feature the alien giant from Tony’s nightmares of a half-destroyed red planet, and Steve’s vision of fighting in the jungle. 

“He’s the key. The alien with the gauntlet. Tony, you said he believed he had control over anything he wanted.” Steve pictures the metal glove with glowing, colored points. 

“He said he could do it with a snap of his fingers,” Tony replies. He stares off into the middle distance, tapping a screwdriver idly against the arm of his chair. “But how? I know in my dream I was desperate to get the gauntlet away from him.”

“Maybe it’s like a remote control or something?” Barton muses. “But I don’t know enough about tech to figure how that would work. A controller glove that would make something destroy reality?”

“Plus you’d need a...power source.” Tony stopped tapping and straightened in his seat. “Unless the whole thing is a power source. Or a bunch of power sources… JARVIS!” Tony scrambles to his feet and over to one of the holotable consoles. “Bring up Howard’s old files, the shit they got off Hydra and the Germans near the end of war.” Blue-edged holographic files zipped into view.

Steve tenses at Tony’s words, at hearing the name Hydra. He’s got a bad feeling; nothing connected to Hydra was going to be good.

“A-ha,” Tony mutters, swiping a hand to pull one image forward and enlarging it to show scanned documents in Howard’s familiar spiky handwriting. It takes Steve a second to realize that Howard’s pages are translations of the accompanying typed pages written in German, talking about power sources and weapons. But the word that catches Steve’s attention is _Tesseract_.

He freezes in instinctive reaction, visceral and sudden, when Tony flips to the next document and an image of the Tesseract fills the screen. That goddam fucking Cube. It’s just a scan of a black and white photo, but Steve remembers the searing blue light that tore through armies and the Red Skull and the floor of the Valkyrie.

“Fuck,” Barton mutters, face pale. Romanoff looks equally unsettled, whispering something in Russian under her breath. “I’ve seen that before. Someone used it to open a portal in one of my nightmares.”

“So have I,” Romanoff’s voice is brittle with forced calm. “In the dream about aliens in 2012.”

“It’s called the Tesseract,” Steve says roughly. More than ninety years and just saying the name sends shivers down his spine. “And the last time I saw it was in 1944 when it disintegrated the Red Skull into a hole in space right in front of my eyes, then burned through three layers of metal hull to fall into the North Atlantic.”

“Well that sounds horrifying,” Tony mutters, hands flying through the holo-images as he flips through the rest of the pages in the file, reading quickly. “But this thing is interesting. Definitely some kind of power source, the equations are insane, and this thing emits gamma rays like nobody’s business.”

“Hydra used it to make weapons,” Steve says grimly. “I have no idea how.”

“Well lucky for us, dear old Dad seems to have gotten the whole package. There are plans here for more than one piece of tech designed to harness the energy output of this thing,” Tony replies. HIs eyes dart from screen to screen, reading quickly.

“It’s too much of a coincidence that we all recognize this Tesseract, even though only Steve has ever seen it in person before,” Romanoff states. “Tony’s suggestion seems insane, but I almost hate to admit that it sounds...plausible.”

“We already figured the dreams weren’t really dreams,” Barton adds. “Visions of some kind of altered reality seem as likely as anything else.”

Tony’s still staring at a screen full of technical equations on the Tesseract. “If this is a power source, maybe that’s how he...does whatever he does with the glove thing…”

“Tony,” Steve says thoughtfully. “You said the glove looked like it had lights on it. Was one of them blue? Like, Tesseract blue.” As the words leave his mouth, Steve’s inexplicably sure he’s right, like a gut feeling. 

Tony nods, expression considering. “So the Tesseract is part of the glove, maybe as the power source for however it works.”

“We’ve never heard of anything like this before,” Romanoff says. “We need more information. Something better than ninety-year-old files.”

“The only way to do that is to study it in person,” Tony says. “And to do _that_ , we’d have to find it. Chances are good it’s still in the ocean somewhere, but that’s going to be a tricky search.”

The last thing Steve wants is to see the Tesseract again, but can’t think of any other way they can get answers. He pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Who or what do you need, if we’re going to go looking for the Cube?”

“An expert in gamma radiation and particle physics,” Tony replies immediately. “As to what we need for retrieval, I’ve got that covered.” He gestures to indicate the lab full of equipment.

Steve runs his hand through his hair, thinking. ”Okay, I’m going to call Director Coulson. I’m not going to give him all the details, but there’s a good chance he’ll know who might be able to help us.”

  
  


***

Coulson gave them a name, Dr. Bruce Banner, and said he would bring the man to the Tower that afternoon. They’re all tired of looking at the timeline and holo-displays, so Tony takes them down to the common room and orders up a breakfast spread from the cafe and bakery on the main floor of the Tower in the meantime. After barely an hour, the restless need for answers seems to hit them all at the same time, and soon after they’re back in the lab.

Coulson shows up just after lunch, a nervous-looking man with curly dark hair and glasses following him into the lab. Steve steps forward to shake Coulson’s hand. “Director, thanks for the assist.”

“Anytime, Captain, you know that,” Coulson replies. He indicates the man standing next to him. “This is Dr. Bruce Banner.”

Steve nods and they shake hands. “Dr. Banner. Thanks for coming.”

“Thanks for asking nicely,” Banner replies, dry-voiced and with a sideways look at Coulson that makes Steve wonder what went on to get Banner here. “So what am I here for?” Banner asks, walking farther into the lab, looking around curiously and nodding politely at Romanoff and Barton.

“I’ll leave you all to get to work.” Coulson claps Steve on the shoulder before turning to the door. “Cap, I’ll catch you later.”

Steve turns back to Banner and sees an odd look on the man’s face. Banner’s looking confusedly between the three of them, but before Steve gets a chance to ask what the problem is, Banner says, “Have we all met before? I mean, I know we haven’t, I didn’t recognize anyone’s name except Stark’s, but…” He trails off and squints at them through his glasses.

Steve exchanges a look with Natasha and Clint. They both give a subtle nod, and Steve closes his eyes for a moment because yeah, he’s had the same feeling of familiarity ever since Banner walked through the door. _Not a coincidence._

“The technical explanation is probably better coming from Stark,” Steve says. “But the core of it is that we think that we all know each other in...a different version of reality. One that we should be living in instead of this one.”

Banner gives Steve a wide-eyed stare, then turns it on Natasha and Clint, but when they both just nod Banner shakes his head in disbelief. “You know that sounds crazy, right?”

Clint groans out a tired laugh. “We’re aware.”

“Just to be clear, not the idea of multiple realities, that’s a core principle of space-time physics,” Banner says, pulling off his glasses to rub a hand across his face. “But you can’t just...be in a different reality, _and_ know that’s what’s happening. It doesn’t… It doesn’t work like that.” He gestures helplessly.

Natasha leans forward, catching Banner’s attention. “You have nightmares of aliens, of fighting. Of people disappearing into dust.” Banner stills, focused on her words. “Or you have memories of things that didn’t happen.”

This time, Banner nods slowly. “How do you…?”

“Because we’ve had the same dreams,” Steve answers the unspoken question. The next half-hour is spent trying to explain their theory, but Banner’s technical questions are beyond Steve’s ability to answer. Where the hell did Stark get to? 

“So why do you need me?” Banner asks. “Since it sounds like you didn’t know who I was before I arrived any more than I knew you.” He doesn’t sound like he’s entirely on board with everything they just dumped on him, but he’s not running for the door either.

“We need your help to find something,” Steve starts, until Tony’s voice interrupts as he appears from behind a wall of equipment.

“We’re looking for an energy source in the gamma ray spectrum. We know the approximate location but it’s a damn big area and also underwater, so.” Tony strides up to shake Banner’s hand. “Tony Stark. And Steve says Coulson says you’re the best, and I gotta say I agree. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled.”

“Well, hopefully I can help,” Banner replies. “Even if you know roughly where this thing is, you need to narrow the field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?”

Tony shrugs. “JARVIS can get us access to whatever we need.”

Steve steps away as the talk shifts into tech speak. Tony leads Banner away to the other end of the lab where they surround themselves with screens and start working.

He joins Barton and Romanoff where they stand studying the timeline data. The urge to confide in them pushes at him, as though they were old friends and not brand-new acquaintances. 

“I’ve been alive for more than a century, and between the War and SHIELD, I thought I’d seen everything. But all this…” Steve waves his hand toward Tony’s timeline. “The coincidences and the way we’ve all been orbiting around each other without ever quite connecting until now. The fact that the reality we know has been warped somehow. I don’t know what to think about that.”

“Like you don’t know what’s real?” Romanoff asks. Steve nods and she studies him for a long moment before her expression softens with compassion. “Who do you see? Who was taken away from you?”

Steve stiffens, not expecting the question. Not expecting that she would be able to read him so clearly. But for the first time in years, he finds he wants to talk about it. “His name is Bucky.” He rubs his hands over his face, tilting his head to stare across the room. It’s hard, he’s never spoken of Bucky to anyone except Peggy and that one ill-fated attempt at talking to a therapist so long ago. But this isn’t the time for holding back, not anymore. 

“The first time I saw him, I was nine. I got beat up in an alley and could picture him, clear as day, coming to my rescue. Most kids forget their imaginary friends over time, except I never did. My whole life I saw him at my side. Spoke to him, imagined he spoke back. Always sure that he wasn’t real, wasn’t really there, but he was my best friend all the same.” 

Steve pauses, pressing a hand for a moment against the ache of longing in his chest. “There were a few times, for months or years or decades, where I wouldn’t see him, even if I always thought about him. And I loved him. But five years ago… It was like someone ripped my heart straight out of my chest. I haven’t seen him since, and it feels like a different kind of absence. Like he’s truly gone.”

He gestures widely at the data on the screen, face twisting with a wash of anger, an anger borne of grief and the weight of lost years. “And now I’m finding out that Bucky _should have been real_ . That I was meant to have him at my side in truth, but that _one_ person, one alien monster, chose to take that away from me. To take countless people away from countless others. And if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll find Thanos and destroy him. Put things back the way they should be.”

They sit silently in the wake of his declaration, until Barton speaks. “I had a family. A wife, Laura, and three kids. Cooper, Lila, and Nathaniel. I still had Nat in my life.” He reaches out to clasp her hand with a sad smile. “In a slightly different way. But he stole them, as good as killed them. So I’m with you, Cap. We destroy him and we bring them home.”

Romanoff squeezes Barton’s hand. When it doesn’t look like she’ll speak, Steve asks, “And you?”

She closes her eyes, lowers her head. Her answer isn’t what Steve expects. “It’s funny, you both lost something...someone important. Family, lovers. And here I am, getting back everything I was already missing.”

“What do you mean?” Steve asks.

“You read my file back in the day,” Romanoff sighs. “Red Room. KGB. I never had a blood family. But in those dreams and nightmares…” She looks up, meets Steve’s eyes. “I had you. And them.” She tips her head in the direction of Tony and Banner. “And a not-so-different version of this one.” She points at Clint and manages a teasing smile. “We were a team, friends. More than that, all of you were my family. I want that back.”

Romanoff lifts her head again and holds Steve’s gaze. “Whatever it takes.” She pauses and gives him a slight smile. “And I think you should call me Natasha.”

The moment is broken by Tony’s shout from across the lab. “Hell yeah! Come to Daddy, you sparkly blue bastard.”

“It’s in the middle of the ocean,” Banner’s drily amused voice responds. “Pretty sure we’ve got to go to it.” He flips through screens on the holotable in front of him. “I can narrow it down from here, so we’ve got a rough idea of where to go. But we’ll have to get closer to home in on the signal.”

Steve crosses the lab to look at the map projected in front of Banner. “I’ve got the coordinates where the plane went down, just after I saw the Cube burn its way through the floor. Should get us close enough for your scans.” 

“Okay, that works,” Banner says. “Also, does anyone have a plan for how we’re actually going to retrieve this thing from beneath potentially several thousand meters of ocean?”

Tony waves his hand carelessly and gives them all a grin. “Don’t worry, I’ve got that covered.”

***

“It’s here,” Banner calls out from his seat in the back of the Quinjet, tapping on the screen of the tablet. “Eight hundred and sixty-three meters down.”

Steve studies the ocean out the window. Flat and featureless in all directions, open water rather than ice since it’s summertime, but otherwise it looks the same as his last glimpse before the Valkyrie hit the ice. Blue sky and dark water. 

“Allright, kids. Time to go swimming,” Tony claps his hands before strapping on a headset and pair of gloves covered in electronics. Beside him, the suit of Iron Man armor powers up, blue-white lights in the face and chest glowing. The suit’s camera view appears on the computer screen in front of them, and with a gesture from Tony the armour clanks to the back of the Quinjet.

“We’re in position,” Clint says. The Quinjet hovers a few feet above the water, close enough to catch the spray from the waves as the ramp opens and lowers. 

Tony grins. “J, go fish.” 

The thrusters on the armor fire up and the suit jumps from the back of the quinjet, taking a high upward loop before diving straight down into the water.

Steve watches the screen, attention glued to it even though there’s nothing to be seen but blackness, bubbles and flecks of organic matter catching the lights from the armour. Banner’s voice gives directions quietly from Tony’s other side. 

It’s nearly an hour before the image on the screen shows anything except black water, but finally the powerful lights of the suit illuminate the rock and sand of the sea floor. Shadowed shapes of deep sea marine life flick away from the edges of the field of view as the suit cameras pan the area.

Tony manipulates the controls with quick flicks of his hands and fingers. “Come on, here fishy, fishy. We know you’re down here somewhere.”

Steve watches the camera pan past a mound of silt and stone, but as the lights pass by a faint glow catches right at the edge of the screen just as one of the sensors starts beeping. “Tony—”

“I see it,” Tony says, steering the suit back around. The view moves closer and the suit’s metal hands come into view, mimicking the movements Tony makes with the control gloves. Stirring the water above the glowing spot reveals the edge of electric blue, and Steve can’t keep himself from gasping. _The Tesseract._

Even muted through the camera and screens, it’s the colour of his nightmares. 

He doesn’t get a good look as the metal hands dislodge the cube from the seabed and into the case, then the cameras turn upward and all they can see on the screen is a rush of water and bubbles as the suit heads back to the surface.

No one speaks while they wait, tense with fear and hope and a dozen other thoughts and emotions. Tony’s “Incoming,” breaks the silence just before the suit breaks free of the water with a violent splashing rush. Landing on the back ramp, the suit clanks forward before holding up the case and opening it.

Brilliant blue, so bright it lights up the interior of the jet and chases the shadows into far corners. The last time Steve saw this thing it was burning its way through the metal floor of the Valkyrie. Steve instinctively holds out his arm to keep the rest of the team back. “Don’t touch it.” 

“Боже ты мой,” Natasha breathes. When Steve glances over, he sees her focussed on the Tesseract and for once her expression is wide open—fear and recognition. It’s the same for all of them, staring at the glowing blue cube with identical expressions.

Tony moves his hands and the suit mirrors the movement, closing the case and sealing the latch. 

“I think that proves we’re on the right track,” Tony says quietly, his usual irreverence missing. “Because I sure as hell have never seen that thing before, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it as well as if I’d studied it for weeks. And from the looks on everyone’s faces, we’re all on the same page.”

Steve can’t tear his eyes from the case, even though it’s closed and the Tesseract’s blue light is hidden from view. “Take us back to the Tower.”

***

By the time the Quinjet returns to Manhattan and Stark Tower, they’re all visibly exhausted. But they gather in the lab, regardless, driven by an unspoken feeling of urgency. Like finding the Tesseract made it all feel more real. 

Despite the tiredness, though, Steve’s on edge. It’s all he can do not to pace around the lab like a caged animal. Just being in the same room as the Tesseract makes him uneasy, and he instinctively tries to keep it in sight at all times. A threat.

“So if one of these is real, they’re probably all real,” Natasha states. She slumps down on a stool. “That’s the theory we’re going with.”

“There were five glowing points on the gauntlet when I saw it.” Tony goes straight to one of the large storage shelves lining the side of the lab and starts pulling metal parts and electronic components down, piling them on the nearby worktable. A holoscreen pops up nearby and Steve sees the HYDRA technical drawings related to the Tesseract tech. “When Rogers saw it, there were six.”

Steve nods. “I’m the last one to see the gauntlet, so that’s probably what we’re working with.”

“How the hell are we supposed to find more of these? We don’t even know what they are, these ‘stones,’” Clint highlights with finger quotes as he sighs. “We don’t even know if they’re on Earth. There were aliens in those dreams. These things could be literally anywhere in the universe.”

“Too many unknowns,” Natasha agrees. 

Steve approaches the timeline display again. “All we can do is keep trying. Find some detail we’ve overlooked that might help us figure out where these things are.”

But after hours of trying to pick details out of their dream memories and talking in circles, only Tony and Banner have been productive as they work to build the equipment needed to use the Cube. 

At a loss, Steve finally suggests they bring in Coulson and lay out the whole situation. “He’s seen more strange things as director of SHIELD than probably any other person alive, everyone in this room included. If nothing else he’ll bring another perspective.” 

“Hey, maybe he’ll even deus ex machina us another solution like he did with Banner,” Tony quips from the workbench, even as he never lifts his eyes from the tangle of wires and electronics in front of him. 

Banner laughs quietly. “He found me in India, he didn’t magic me out of thin air.”

Steve shakes his head at their banter and steps away to make the call. 

Within the hour, JARVIS announces, “Agent Coulson has arrived,” a few minutes before Coulson strides through the entrance to the lab. “Twice in one week, Steve. I think it’s a record.”

“It’s been a hell of a weird week, Phil,” Steve sighs. “Look, this might sound like a strange question.”

“Nothing is strange to me anymore, Captain,” Coulson replies, tone wry. And Steve nods to himself, because isn’t that why he called Coulson in the first place?

“Has SHIELD ever encountered aliens?” Steve closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. Fuck, this sounds so insane. “Real, actual aliens. Preferably ones we can communicate with? I’m not aware of anything from while I was on active duty, but during the years I was retired...”

Coulson nods, though, which despite being the one to bring Coulson here, honestly is not what Steve expects. “As a matter of fact, I think I know a guy. Did you ever read the file on the incident in New Mexico? 2011.”

Steve thinks back to when he tried to catch up when he returned to SHIELD in 2017, after Peggy died. He must have read hundreds of case files, much of it in a haze of grief. A few details surface, though. “A supposed meteor strike that turned out to be a weapon. It looked like a hammer that lodged itself in the ground. Evacuated the town when a robot with flamethrowers attacked, and a handful of enhanced fought to take it down? I don’t remember much else except that the hammer was marked as lost during the fight.”

Coulson just gives Steve an even look, and it’s all Steve can do to only sigh and give Coulson a hard stare. Should’ve known. “Phil, seriously?”

Coulson doesn’t quite manage to hide his smile. “You know me, Cap.”

“That’s the worst part,” Steve groans. “I know exactly what you’re like and still find myself surprised every time.”

Tony calls out from across the room. “Care to share with the class?”

Natasha speaks up before Steve has a chance, a smirk teasing her lips. “The report isn’t complete. The truth, but not the whole truth.”

Coulson smiles blandly back at her, “That’s the game, isn’t it?”

She nods and shrugs. “Two truths and a lie.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Enough of the spy competition or whatever this is. So...aliens?”

Coulson tips his head in a half-nod. “Sort of. The enhanced in the report were a little more than that. Basically, people on Earth know them as gods. The one I met goes by Thor, son of Odin and Prince of Asgard.”

No one has a response to that. 

Eventually Clint breaks the silence. “Thor, as in...Norse mythology god of thunder or whatever.”

“Turns out, not so much a myth,” Coulson replies. 

Steve nods. He believes Coulson; the man is a lot of things, but an outright liar isn’t one of them. What’s one more impossible thing amidst everything else? “Where is he now?”

“Last I saw him, he was headed home to Asgard. With any luck he’s still there.”

“You know how to get a message to him?” Steve asks.

Coulson gives a dry smile, “Guess we’re going to find out.”

***

Coulson’s assertion that, “You’re not going to want him landing on your Tower, trust me,” has them taking the quinjet out to a Stark research facility upstate. Tony sends the workers home so the place is empty, and the six of them walk to the edge of the grass beside the building. 

Coulson peers upwards at the sky. “You’re going to want to step back.”

He starts speaking, loud but not quite shouting, and Steve can see the confused expression he’s sure he’s making mirrored on everyone else’s face. 

“Heimdall!” Coulson says, “Phillip, son of Coul, from Midgard requests your help. We need the assistance of Thor.”

Nothing happens.

Tony tips his sunglasses down to give Coulson a raised eyebrow. “Not that I have anything against yelling at the sky…”

Coulson’s still looking up. “Yeah, I don’t know how long this is supposed to take.”

“And this Thor guy doesn’t have, like, a space phone?” Tony asks.

Coulson shakes his head. “From what I understand, this Heimdall is the—”

A crack of thunder and rush of wind cuts off the rest of Coulson’s words as the sky suddenly darkens with swirling storm clouds. A blinding column of light hits the ground a few yards away, and Steve shields his eyes and turns his face away. Sees the rest of the team doing the same. 

It’s over in seconds, and when his vision clears Steve sees a blond giant standing in the middle of a ring of burnt grass. His appearance is entirely incongruous to their surroundings; he’s wearing armor of metal and leather beneath a long red cape. The man—or the alien god, whatever—is also grinning wide and bright.

A _familiar_ grin, and Steve immediately looks to the rest of the team and sees the same sense of recognition on their faces. The last figure from all those dreams and nightmares slots into place, and apparently it’s an alien prince. _This is getting goddamned ridiculous._

“Phillip, son of Coul. It is good to see you again, my friend. I received word from Heimdall that you have requested my aid,” the man says in a booming voice, stepping forward to clap one large hand on Coulson’s shoulder. 

“We need information at the very least,” Coulson says. “But it could turn into a fight.”

“You know I am always ready to ride into battle,” Thor says. “But first, what is it you wish to know?”

Steve steps forward, then, and his words wipe the smile from Thor’s face. “What do you know about something called the Tesseract?”

***

As it turns out, Thor knows quite a lot about the Tesseract; certainly far more than any of the rest of them had put together from their fractured dreams and echo-memories. And like Banner and all the rest of them, he’s had at least a handful of the same dreams.

They were correct in thinking the Tesseract is one of six.

“The Infinity Stones were created at the beginning of the universe. Artifacts of immense power, each alone capable of incomprehensible change. Control over the essential aspects of existence in the universe: power, reality, space, time, mind, and soul. Together, the stones would have the ability to control anything in existence.” Thor looks troubled. “These dreams, or visions, that we share. You believe that someone used the Stones to alter reality.”

“That’s it in a nutshell,” Tony says. “What we’re not sure of is why we seem to be the only ones to notice. To have these dreams of fighting together when we’ve never met, or have visions of people who don’t exist.” He nods toward Steve and Clint.

“The Stones are powerful and strange,” Thor says thoughtfully. “It’s possible that those of us who were in contact with an Infinity Stone were not affected in the same way as others.”

“So somehow, in our original reality, we all interacted with the stones,” Steve says slowly, aware he’s repeating a bit but wanting to be sure he’s on the right track. “Then this Thanos used the stones to get rid of half the people in the universe, but because we’d been near the stones it didn’t affect us?”

“Wait, no, that makes sense,” Tony says, intensity colouring his voice. “Because we interacted with the Stones before, it’s as though we’re connected to them. Thanos using the stones changed reality, but couldn’t entirely change us because of that pre-existing connection. Or because big, purple, and ugly didn’t actually know how to use them, so he did it wrong.”

“Leaving us somewhere in-between,” Natasha finishes, and Tony nods. 

“But if Thanos used the Stones to change reality, then if we can get our hands on all six, we can use them to change things back,” Steve states. 

Clint nods. “So the question right now is how do we find them.”

“Allow me to return to Asgard,” Thor says. “I shall speak with Heimdall. There is nothing in the Nine Realms he cannot see. He should be able to locate the Stones, though retrieving them will be a different matter,”

  
  


***

While Thor is gone, Tony and Banner manage to build a working machine to harness the Cube as an energy source, using the old Hydra plans from Howard’s files. 

What they discover in the process, thanks to some information from Thor, is that the Space stone is literal and can be used to open portals. To anywhere in the universe. 

“This is perfect,” Tony says in awe, standing in front of the swirling blue portal they just created as a test run. “I mean, it’s terrifying. I have nightmares about these portals, but this means it doesn’t matter where the Stones are in the universe. We can drop ourselves right where we need to be.” 

Steve agrees, but has to turn away from the swirling blue. It makes him think of the War and Bucky, and he just can’t handle that right now.

Thor returns shortly after Tony shuts down the portal test, and Steve’s glad for the distraction. Especially since Thor looks...different. His eyes have gone black and a crimson mist seems to slick around his body, the malevolent tendrils centered on the hammer Thor holds in his hand.

“Hey now, Point Break, you look more than a little bit of not okay.” Tony approaches cautiously, waving his hand in Thor’s direction. “What’s going on with the creepy red glow?” 

“Heimdall was indeed able to locate the Stones,” Thor replies. “One of them could be reached from Asgard, the Reality stone, so I have already retrieved it.” He groans in pain, hunching over for a moment, but waves away Steve’s approach. “I am fine, my friend. For now Mjolnir has absorbed the stone, and though I feel its effects I can control it until the right time.”

Steve hesitates, but in the end he can only trust that Thor will let them know if he becomes concerned. “What are the locations for the other Stones?” 

“Another is here in Midgard,” Thor states. “In this city, in fact, and not far from here. The Time stone. I would not have expected more than one of the Infinity Stones to be here, but your world appears to be full of surprises.” 

“Why wouldn’t that show up on our scans for the Tesseract?” Banner wonders, mumbling under his breath as he starts flicking through data on the holoscreen beside him. “Shielded somehow? Or emits energy at a different wavelength than the Tesseract....?”

“I do not know, my friends. But Heimdall is certain it is here, in the possession of the Ancient One.” Thor moves to stand beside a screen showing a full-sky map and recites a series of spatial coordinates to Tony. Blinking location markers appear on the map. “The other stones are not so close by. The Power stone is in the ruins of a planet called Morag. The Mind stone resides within a scepter weapon in Thanos’ stronghold on Titan. And the Soul stone is hidden on a planet named Vormir, rumoured to be protected by a dark guardian.”

“We’re going to need to do this quick,” Steve says. “One after the other, because we don’t want the wrong people catching on to what we’re doing and trying to stop us. But we can’t all go at once. It’s too risky if there’s a problem, and we need people on this end to run the portal generator or come in as backup.”

Tony’s studying the map. “I’ll take Morag. I’ve got the suit, and now that I know what we’re working with I can make the right modifications for it to be space-worthy. Life support, the whole deal, just in case.”

“I’ll deal with the one here in New York,” Banner replies. “I’m not some kind of enhanced superhuman, and I will be honest and say I really don’t want to go to space.”

Natasha nods. “Clint and I will go after the Mind stone. Clint’s experienced its effects directly, and I’ve had my own experiences with someone fucking with my head. If nothing else, hopefully that will give us some kind of immunity if someone tries to use the stone against us.”

“Plus it’s an infiltration mission,” Clint adds. “And Rogers, Stark. You’re both awesome and all, but subtle you are not.”

Steve nods in agreement. “That leaves me with Vormir and the Soul stone.” A feeling of inevitability washes over him, like this was always where he was supposed to go.

***

“JARVIS, run those planet coordinates into the portal generator,” Tony instructs. “One hour gap between arrival and return, then return attempts every fifteen minutes until there's success. Everyone’s clocks are already synchronized with home base, and the timer starts as soon as the portal opens.”

“Remember, we can only keep the portal open for a few minutes at a time,” Bruce adds. “If you’re not at the rendezvous point on schedule, we’ll keep trying until we get you.”

“No one gets left behind,” Steve states. He surveys the team, all of them geared up and ready. Tony in the Iron Man suit, modified for space. Natasha and Clint both in all black, nearly bristling with weapons visible and hidden. Steve’s in a version of his own gear, navy blue and silver and reinforced by Tony with metamaterials, hopefully able to withstand the guardian Steve will be facing on Vormir. The weight of the shield on his arm is both familiar and comforting.

“We’re wasting daylight,” Tony says, the faceplate of his armour snapping into place. “Morag is a go. J, hit the switch.”

 _“Portal activation in five seconds,”_ JARVIS replies, giving the countdown. With a surge of energy, the swirling blue portal materializes in front of them, showing a dark landscape on the other side, full of crumbled stone, geysers and pools of water. A blighted, half-crumbled temple looms in the distance.

Tony fires the thrusters to lift off the ground. “See you in an hour, kids.” With a quick blast he’s through the portal and Steve watches the red and gold figure shrink into the distance until the portal swirls closed again.

 _“Fifty-nine minutes and counting until rendezvous,”_ JARVIS reports. The timer counts down on the screen next to the portal generator. 

Steve nods. “Now we wait.”

***

Tony’s not sure what he was expecting—a fight, a monster guardian, a series of ancient temple traps like Indiana Jones—but what he finds is an empty ruin on an empty planet, and a little silver orb floating above an altar behind a forcefield. 

“Not that I’m complaining, J.” He scans the altar and the forcefield generator with the suit’s sensors, studying the readouts. “I just figured, first time on a new planet, first time in outer space, you know. It’s been nothing but aliens all the way down on Earth, seems like, but here we are all on our lonesome.” 

_“At least we still have each other, Sir,”_ JARVIS replies dryly.

Tony blinks. “Wait, was that a joke?”

_“A poor one, no doubt.”_

“You’ve been spending too much time with Barton.” Tony shakes his head, then a blinking point on the display catches his attention. “Shit, these energy readings, J. This little forcefield is some powerful stuff.”

 _“I am unable to identify the mechanism to shut down the forcefield,”_ JARVIS states. _“The enhanced material of the suit should be strong enough to pass through for a limited amount of time; however, I would recommend that your body not be inside at the time.”_

“Good, great,” Tony mutters, thinking quickly. The countdown timer in the corner of the display blinks at him. “Okay, detach the left hand and forearm, and reform in Homing Pigeon mode.” As he speaks, the panels on the suit’s left arm snap open and release. Tiny maneuvering thrusters fire up and position the suit arm hovering in front of Tony, open hand facing the orb. “Let’s give this a try. Go fetch.”

The suit arm flies forward, thrusters ramping up as it pushes against the resistance of the forcefield until the metal fingers curl around the orb. The metal of the suit arm sizzles and melts under the energy, filling the air with the sharp smell of corroding metal. “That’s it, J, run the thrusters at full power to get that thing out of there.”

Flaring bright enough Tony nearly has to look away, the thrusters fire for nearly a minute before suddenly bursting through the forcefield and shooting wildly across the room to crash and rebound against the far corner. 

“Yes! Good job, left hand of mine,” Tony crows as he follows. The suit arm is still sizzling, thrusters flickering weakly, and there’s no way it’s reattaching to the rest of the suit. But the orb is undamaged, and that’s all that really matters. Picking up both, he takes to the air back toward the rendezvous site. Just as he lands he sees a swirl of blue starting to appear, and moments later he’s got a clear view to the other side and the lab in the Tower.

He steps through and the portal snaps closed behind him. Popping open his faceplate, he looks at the place where a goddamn doorway halfway across the galaxy just was. “That is such a trip,” he says. “If someone told me a week ago that I’d be making a round trip to another plant in an hour or less, I would have thought they were off their rocker.”

“How’d it go?” Steve asks.

Tony holds up the silver orb. “Wrecked part of the armour, but mission accomplished. Spy kids, you’re up.”

***

Natasha straightens and sets her shoulders, nodding to Clint. They had all their gear, an armory’s worth of weapons, and a map of Thanos’ stronghold with as much information on it as Heimdall had been able to provide. “We’re ready.” 

Banner stands behind the control panel. “JARVIS, input the coordinates for Titan. Guys, this should drop you near the base, but watch yourselves. This place probably won’t be as deserted as Morag.”

The portal swirls to life in front of them, and Natasha scans what they can see of the other side. It looks clear enough. A red-orange sky and the ruins of another city. Seems to be a theme, and she can’t say she’s a fan.

“It’s a long way from Budapest,” Clint says with a crooked grin. Natasha laughs, because yes, it certainly is. She nods, and they jog forward through the portal, and turn to watch it swirl closed behind them. 

They survey their surroundings, thankfully empty of anyone save themselves. Natasha brings up the holographic map from the device on her wrist, and points across the landscape to where a mostly intact building rises above the rubble. “That should be our target. Guess we better start walking.” The shadow of a spaceship hovers in the atmosphere above them.

“Wow,” Clint mutters under his breath. “Under different circumstances, this would be totally awesome.”

The portal dropped them close to their target, so it’s not long before they’re huddled behind a spear of rock near a side entrance, surveying the guards standing nearby. They look like the aliens from the nightmares about the invasion of Manhattan, the ones Thor called Chitauri. 

“Ugly bastards, aren’t they?” Clint says. 

“This entry is the best bet, closest to the armory where Heimdall said the scepter is stored.” Natasha scans the map. “Time for a distraction.”

“Got it covered,” Clint replies, pulling an arrow from his quiver and taking aim high and to the left of their position. Releasing the arrow, he slips back into position next to Natasha. Holding up his open hand, he silently counts down with his fingers. _Five, four, three, two—_

A high-pitched beeping sound echoes strangely through the ruins, drawing the attention of the Chitauri near the entry. After a few tense seconds where Natasha’s not sure it’s enough, the guards move in the direction of the arrow, away from them.

Slipping silently from their hiding place in tandem, it’s only a matter of moments before they are safely through the door and tucked into a corner waiting to see if they’ve tripped an alarm. When a minute passes, then two, and there’s no obvious change, they meet each other’s eyes and nod. 

Natasha leads them down the first hall, following the map while Clint covers them from behind, arrow nocked on his bow. They reach the armoury without incident, dodging a few Chitauri patrols but otherwise not encountering any significant obstacles. 

“This feels a little too easy,” Clint mutters. Natasha nods, peering around the edge of the door into the hallway. 

“I’ll take suspiciously easy over the alternative,” she replies. “We’re still clear, do you see the scepter anywhere?” She can picture it from her dreams, gold staff and glowing blue gem set into the end. Knows Clint has seen the same in his nightmares, the ones where someone used the scepter on him to cloud his mind. 

At least they know what they’re looking for.

She listens with one ear to the quiet clanks and shuffles Clint makes as he searches through the room. The rest of her attention is on the hall outside, and the occasional passing Chitauri. Glancing down, she checks the timer on her wrist. _00:24:53._ Shit, they’re going to miss the first return portal. 

Another five minutes creep past when she finally hears Clint’s soft, “Aha,” and the barely audible sound of his footsteps rushing back in her direction. He rounds the nearest corner and she sees the scepter in his hand.

Natasha checks the hall one last time and signals the all-clear. There's no way to make the first return, but damn if they’re going to miss the second one. 

Which of course is when their suspiciously easy time goes to shit, and they round a corner only to come face-to-face with a pair of Chitauri exiting a doorway in front of them.

For a second they all freeze. Natasha tightens her grip on her gun, but before she can act, Clint raises the scepter and waves it around in the direction of the Chitauri.

“We are not the droids you’re looking for.”

_What. The fuck._

When the Chitauri don’t immediately attack, for one unbelievable second she thinks it worked, except then the Chitauri soldiers give an earsplitting screech and raise their weapons. 

“Clint, what the hell?” Natasha shouts as she springs forward, ducking under the blast from the alien weapons and coming back up to fire three shots into the Chitauri’s head. 

“It was worth a shot! Not like I actually know how to use this thing!” he retorts. He drops the scepter for a second to fire off a pair of arrows to take down the other Chitauri. Scooping the scepter back up, he follows Natasha as she takes off running down the hall.

“There’s no way someone didn’t hear that.” Even as she says it, the sound of other Chitauri screaming echoes up the hallway from behind them. 

“Yeah, we’ve definitely overstayed our welcome,” Clint agrees as a dozen Chitauri pour out of a doorway ahead of them. Natasha fires off half a dozen shots over his shoulder. Two of the Chitauri go down, but the rest just climb over the bodies and keep coming.

“Shit, go left!” Natasha shouts, and they detour down another hallway. She weaves them through doors and hallways, trying to follow the map back to the exit. Clint manages to secure the scepter alongside his quiver, freeing him up to fire off arrows as fast as he can. An exploding arrow goes off behind them, closing off a doorway and buying them a bit of time.

“Almost there,” she pants, rounding the last corner into a half dozen Chitauri. She takes down the first two, while Clint shoots over her shoulder to take out a third. She’s out of ammo in the handgun, though, no time to reload so she slides across the floor to grab one of the Chitauri blasters. Three more blasts and they’re clear and out the door, running hell for leather across the ground.

Chitauri pour out of the doorway behind them in pursuit, a screeching hoard racing after them.

“Three minutes to the portal,” Natasha shouts. She fires the blaster behind her, but the weapon is built to a different scale and her aim is shit at this distance. Clint’s doing much better firing off exploding arrows three at a time.

They manage to dodge around a pile of rubble, putting it between them and the Chitauri blaster fire. It’s enough breathing room they can run full-out without trying to return fire, but only lasts a minute before the Chitauri are right on their tail again.

Natasha sees the blue swirl of the portal beginning to appear ahead of them. “It’s there! Go, go!” 

They are close enough now to see through the portal, see the team waiting on the other side. Natasha risks a glance back, and there are two Chitauri right on their heels.

A second later they’re at the portal.

“Incoming!” Clint screams as they both hurtle through the opening, unable to stop their momentum, tumbling into a barely-controlled roll across the floor of the lab. The two screaming Chitauri come through the portal right after them, only to be met with Steve’s shield and Thor’s hammer beating them right back into Titan again.

“Close it!” Steve shouts, and Banner slams the control panel to snap the portal shut.

They all stand frozen in the aftermath, until Clint groans from where he came to rest against the far wall. Wrestling with the straps of his gear, he unbuckles his quiver and the scepter clangs to the floor. 

“What happened to subtle?” Tony asks sarcastically.

“Oh, fuck you,” Clint groans on a laugh, flopping onto his back spread-eagled on the floor.

It breaks the tension, and they all share in the moment of amusement and relief. They’re alive, and they succeeded. Right now, it’s all that matters.

***

Steve steps through the portal to Vormir and finds himself in a twilight world, standing at the edge of a smooth pool with a mountain rising off to his left. The fiery orange-red ring of an eclipsed sun hangs in the sky, the only source of light.

Heimdall said the Stone is hidden at the top of the mountain, and Steve can barely make out a pair of standing stones pointing skyward at the apex. Nothing for it but to start climbing. 

He finds a thin, rough trail to follow, but it’s still at least an hour before he finds himself on inlaid stone stairs instead of bare, rocky ground. He’s within sight of the summit when he reaches a pair of carved stone pillars, beyond which he sees more ancient stonework as the stairs continue wending upwards. 

He continues climbing through the ruins of a shrine or temple, crumbled pillars and plinths lining the path. He pauses on an outcropping overlooking the steep mountainside and the pools across the plain far below. It’s so alien, like nothing he’s ever seen before, like nowhere that exists on Earth. 

_Never thought I’d find myself here, Buck._ Steve isn’t sure if he means the planet, or this entire endeavour, but in the end he doesn’t suppose it matters. This whole thing has been to put things right, and he’s not about to let himself compromise on that goal. When he understood the full implications of what happened, that their reality had been warped and things aren’t how they should be, the understanding that Bucky should have been real has made this personal, too. 

It makes him feel selfish, to know that when he’s honest with himself, he’s doing this more for the possibility of saving Bucky than for any other reason. But it doesn’t make him feel bad enough; he isn’t going to stop, and no matter what he needs to do to accomplish this, he’s willing to do it.

It’s not much longer before he’s at the top, emerging into the open space of the temple spread across the mountain top. An altar sits in the center of the stone floor, but there’s nothing on it. A check around the space doesn’t reveal anything that looks like the stone. 

He hears a noise and whirls around, shield held high, and sees a drifting black spectre standing next to the altar, all hooded cloak and billowing shadows. 

“Welcome to Vormir, Steven Rogers.” The voice echoes hollow through the frozen air.

Steve raises the shield higher. “How do you know my name?”

“It is my curse to know all who journey here,” the spectre replies.

“I’m here for the Soul stone,” Steve states. 

“You should know...it extracts a terrible price,” the spectre replies, and with every word Steve thinks the voice sounds familiar. The more he hears, the more an accent makes itself known. One he hasn’t heard in a long, long time…

But he’s not here to bow to threats. “I’m prepared to pay, whatever the price.”

“We all think that, at first.” The figure reaches up and lowers the hood, revealing his face. “We were all wrong.”

“Red Skull,” Steve throws the shield but it passes through Schmidt’s body, rebounding off the stone pillars behind him and back into Steve’s grip. “How are you here?”

A dry laugh rasps from Schmidt’s throat. “A lifetime ago, I too sought the stones. I even held one in my hand. I’m sure you remember, Captain. But it cast me out, banished me here. Guiding others to a treasure I cannot possess.”

“You didn’t deserve the Cube; no one does. No single person should possess that much power,” Steve replies. 

“And yet here you are,” Schmidt sneers. Casting one arm wide, he points to the edge of the cliff between two curved pillars. “What you seek lies before you, as does what you fear.”

“What is this?” Steve stands at the edge and looks over the cliff, sees a straight drop and a distant pattern of stonework below.

“The price,” Schmidt intones. “The Soul stone holds a special place among the Infinity Stones. You might say….it has a certain wisdom.”

“Tell me what it needs,” Steve states.

“To ensure that whoever possesses it understands its power, the Stone demands a sacrifice,” Schmidt says. 

Which is what Steve was expecting to hear, but he still asks, “Sacrifice of what?”

“In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love. A soul, for a soul.” A sneering grin stretches across Schmidt’s nightmarish red face.

Steve knows he has only one choice; his mind was made up before he ever came here. 

He let the Red Skull take his choices away once before; he sure as hell wasn’t about to let the Red Skull stand in his way, now. 

“The thing is, with someone like you, or like Thanos. You can only see things from one point of view. Subjugation. Killing, death.” Steve straightens his shoulders and turns away from Schmidt, moving away from the edge of the cliff. “You don’t understand love, or sacrifice, and so there’s no way you can understand what the stone wants or how it works.” 

Spinning to face the cliff, Steve takes a running start and leaps from the edge, arms outstretched in freefall. 

As he falls, he concentrates on the Soul stone, picturing it in his mind, focusing on it with every part of himself. Reaching out towards the stone, wherever it is, and hoping the stone will reach back.

Because Steve does believe what Schmidt said about the stone having a certain wisdom; everything he’s heard and seen so far when it comes to the stones would seem to bear that out. The Infinity Stones are not simply mineral and radiation.. 

He has to believe that the Soul stone is something more, and that he can reach it.

_I know the Stones have been misused. They have been taken from their rightful place, and used to further a single tyrant’s quest for power and dominion over others. I’m here for justice, to set right the wrongs done by Thanos, and to do that we need the Infinity Stones. I’ll pay any price, make any sacrifice; whatever is required._

_I want to claim this is a selfless act, but it’s not. What Thanos did stole someone from me, someone important, just as he did millions of others. I want to save the lives of those Thanos destroyed because it’s my duty, but I want to restore the world in order to have Bucky back because of love._

_I am not worthy of wielding one of the Stones, but I beg for the help of the Soul stone, anyway, so that I can try to make things right._

As the ground rushes closer, he closes his eyes, but the impact never comes. He opens his eyes again to find himself in a shadowed, misty space, standing in the center of a room constantly shifting and changing around him. Familiar places; his old tenement apartment in the ‘30s, his apartment in D.C., a dance hall he recognizes from the War. Streets in D.C. and New York, a train car speeding across a mountainside. 

He senses he’s not alone, turns, and Bucky is there. Flickering and shifting like the room around them, all the different versions of Bucky that Steve has known. A child with big grey eyes and tousled brown curls; in the War with his blue coat and a rifle at his shoulder; a young man with lanky limbs and a charming smile; after Azzano, thin and sad. The Winter Soldier, metal arm gleaming. In a red henley and jeans and a scared expression. Clean and wearing white and missing the metal arm. 

But Bucky’s smile is always the same. “Hey, Steve.”

Tears sting his eyes and Steve smiles back. This is Bucky more real than any he’s seen before. “Hey, Buck.”

Bucky looks around, his image shifting to a teen with bright, curious eyes, then to his red-shirted adult self. “Where are we?”

Steve shakes his head. “I was on a planet called Vormir. Now? I’m not sure.” 

Bucky brushes long hair out of his face with his metal hand, shining bright silver against black tactical gear. “I don’t know how I got here. I don’t remember anything, just...flashes. But I know you.”

“I came here to find something called the Soul stone,” Steve says. He looks around at the shifting space around them, mumbling, “And I really hope I’m not dead right now.” 

With a smirk, Bucky replies, “Pretty sure you’re not dead, Steve.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“So what kind of stupid did you get yourself into this time?” Bucky asks, tilting his army cap and straightening his uniform tie. 

Steve laughs, a little sadly. “Pretty stupid, probably.” He shakes his head. “But it’s the right thing to do.”

Bucky’s smile turns sad, too. “Isn’t it always?”

Steve explains everything; that Thanos killed millions but in the process changed reality, that the Avengers somehow still found each other and came together to try and make things right. How they hunted down five other Infinity stones, and with the Soul stone they would have what they needed to bring back all the missing people, and restore reality to its proper state.

“You were supposed to be there next to me my entire life, and it’s selfish of me, but I have to be honest and say that when it comes down to it, I’m doing to this to bring you back,” Steve finishes. 

Bucky’s eyes are still dark and sad, long hair partly shielding his face. “I don’t think I’m worth all this.”

Fiercely, Steve replies, “You’re worth everything.”

“You always do conviction so well, darling,” a crisp British voice comes from behind Steve, and when he turns he sees Peggy standing there, looking young and vibrant with her trademark curls and bright red lipstick on smiling lips. 

“Peggy,” Steve breathes out. It’s so good to see her again, to see her the way he always remembers her.

“Hello Steve, darling. It’s been a long time.” 

Steve takes a hesitant step in her direction but stops, unable to bring himself to move away from Bucky. Because even seeing her here, it’s not enough to deter him from his path, and his heart breaks a little. “Peggy, I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s all right, Steve,” she states, her tone confident and reassuring, like it always was. “I know why you’re here. What you’re doing. Who you’ve chosen. And I understand. It’s finally time for you to go home.”

It’s too much, and Steve closes his eyes against the emotion. When he made the decision to come after the Soul stone, when he decided he was willing to do whatever it takes...he didn’t anticipate this. Never expected to have the truth of the sacrifice he’s making so clearly laid out in front of him. 

But it’s not enough to dissuade Steve from this path, to change his mind. He opens his eyes and says quietly, “I do love you Peggy, and I will always be grateful for the life we had here, but... I need to put things right. And that means—”

“I know, Steve,” Peggy says again. “I would expect nothing less of you, to be quite honest. It’s who you are, and it’s what I always loved about you.” She steps close and holds his gaze, her own warm. “It’s what sets you apart from Thanos and everyone like him. He doesn’t understand what love is, and that a sacrifice made for love is no sacrifice at all. People like Thanos, like the Red Skull...like so many others, they can only think in terms of killing and death. They don’t understand that the sacrifice of love doesn’t have to involve killing someone. Sometimes all it takes is letting go of someone for a higher purpose.”

Steve can only nod, unable to find his voice. 

Peggy smiles. “And in the end, Steve, all I really want is for you to be happy. No matter what form that happiness takes.”

“Peggy, I.. Thank you, for understanding. For loving me.”

“Always, Steve,” Peggy whispers. Her gaze shifts to Bucky and her voice firms, along with a commanding look. “Sergeant Barnes. You take care of him, and love him fiercely.”

Bucky in his sharply pressed Army uniform snaps a salute, but he’s smiling, wide and bright. “Yes, ma’am.”

Peggy leans close to Steve and presses a kiss against his lips. With a final smile, she turns and walks away. Steve watches, tears in his eyes and on his cheeks, until she fades from view. 

He’s not alone anymore, though, and turns to face Bucky again, reaching down and taking both of Bucky’s hands in his own. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does Bucky, but they don’t have to. Steve just steps in close and tips his head to rest his temple against Bucky’s, and closes his eyes.

When he opens his eyes again, Steve finds himself flat on his back in a pool of water. He sits up and looks around, realizing that he’s once again at the base of the mountain on Vormir. He feels something inside his closed fist, and opens his fingers to find a small gem, warm and glowing brightly orange.

 _The Soul stone. I did it._ Breathing out a long breath, Steve bows his head and presses his closed fist with the stone against his lips for a long moment. 

“I’m coming, Bucky.” He climbs to his feet and heads back to the portal rendezvous point.

***

Steve and the others stand around the centre of the lab, tensely watching Tony and Bruce finishing their assembly of a gauntlet similar to the one Steve saw Thanos wearing in his dream, only built like the Iron Man armor in red and silver. 

Bruce had retrieved the Time stone while they were waiting for Steve. “You were gone for nearly ten hours.” He says it almost apologetically, that they felt they couldn’t justify losing the time when Steve had missed the first few rendezvous times. 

He’d experienced surprisingly little trouble getting the Time stone, as it turned out. “The Ancient One could tell that something was wrong, but not what had happened. They were willing to let us borrow the stone, once I explained what had happened, and how we were planning to make it right. We just have to make sure that the Stones are all returned to their proper places when this is all over.”

Seeing all the stones together like this has Steve in awe, even as it makes him uneasy. That much power, all in one place. It’s so dangerous. 

Tony manipulates some kind of electromagnetic beams to place the last stone into the gauntlet, and they all feel the weird pulse of energy that surges through the room. 

Tense from nerves but trying to be nonchalant, Tony stands back and waves his hands in a sort of ta-dah movement. “Achievement unlocked: terrifying space magic glove is a go.”

“What happens next?” Clint asks. “I mean, what happens after we use that thing?”

“If everything we’ve been thinking is right, and if we use the stones the right way, we should just bring everything, and everyone, back into the right stream of reality,” Tony says. “Everything, _everyone_ , will be where and what it should be. We’ll just open our eyes to the same day and time, but in the right reality.”

“Look, I’m just going to come out and say it,” Clint says. “That sounds really anti-climactic.”

“Better than the alternative,” Tony points out.

“We know what we need to do,” Steve says. “Thanos didn’t understand how the stones worked when he did this the first time. He tried to kill people, and instead removed them from the timeline entirely. But that was his mistake, and because his actions changed reality in the past, we have the opportunity to fix this now.” 

***

The argument over who should use the glove is intense. The others are human, but Steve’s as sure as he can be that the serum should heal him fast enough for him to complete the task, after which, well, it wouldn’t matter. “This is something I need to do.”

“Sorry, Cap, but that’s not the way it’s going to go,” Tony fires back. “We’re all in this together.”

“The power of any one of the stones is more than a mortal can bear,” Thor states. “All of them together…” He pauses and looks thoughtfully at the glove. “But there are stories that the power of the stones could possibly be shared.”

Only one of them can wear the glove, though. “It has to be me,” Steve insists in a low voice. “I’m the center of this, along with all of you.” 

Finally, reluctantly, the others nod their agreement. “All right,” Natasha’s the one who speaks. “Each of us has different things to hold in mind when we do this, to put things back to rights.”

With that, there isn’t anything else to say. Steve stands next to the glove, with Tony on one side, Natasha and Clint on the other. Tony puts his hand on Steve’s shoulder, Natasha holds Steve’s other hand while Clint holds onto hers. Thor and Banner step in behind them, tightening hands also on shoulders and arms.

“Okay, we all know what we need to focus on,” Tony says. “Bring everyone home, keep the people important to us from now. Concentrate, be specific, don’t let your thoughts wander. We are literally trying to change reality, here. Or change it back, rather.” 

***

Tony meets Steve’s eyes. They’re as ready as they’ll ever be. He fixes the images in his mind, Pepper and the life they’ve built, his little girl, Morgan. The most important people in his life, the two things he most of all wants to make sure will still be there when he comes out the other side.

_Pepper. Morgan. My family._

***

Natasha grips Clint’s hand as hard as she can. These people are the ones she wants to keep, this family she found and built for herself in another life. They should be close, should be teammates and partners. She pictures Clint with the family he’s described to her, smiling wide and happy. 

_Stay with me._

***

Steve’s hand hesitates just outside the edge of the glove, the glowing stones almost mesmerizing. This is the moment. Either they succeed or they fail, and he refuses to even entertain the idea of failure. He pictures Bucky, like he always does. Remembered all the times throughout his life that Bucky was there, reminding himself that they were real, were supposed to be real. That the love he feels for Bucky is real. Then Steve braces himself, tightens his grip on Nat’s hand, and shoves his hand into the glove. 

Pain and power surge through him, so much that his mind can barely grasp what he needs to do. He realizes he’s screaming, along with the others, and grits his teeth to stop and try to manage the pain until he’s able to stand up straight. He can see the power crackling in the air around them, their hands gripping tight to one another, and Steve meets their eyes one by one.

Tony nods through a grimace of pain. “Do it.”

Steve raises his hand, and with Bucky firmly in his mind’s eye, Steve snaps his fingers.


	5. Part 4: Inevitable

# Part 4: Inevitable

Steve opens his eyes to destruction and the sound of Tony’s voice calling out to him. 

“Come on, buddy. Wake up. That's my man.” He holds out Steve’s shield, shaking it until Steve reaches out to take it. “You lose this again, I'm keeping it.”

“What happened?” Steve groans. His head is splitting, thoughts jumbled and incoherent. _Where the hell?_ He looks around at piles of smoking debris and churned earth around them. Weren’t they just in the Tower? They’re clearly not in Manhattan anymore. But no, they were at the Avengers compound upstate… Steve shakes his head, trying to sort out his thoughts.

“We messed with time and the universe,” Tony says, reaching out a hand to haul Steve to his feet. Tony’s wearing an Iron Man suit, but one unlike any of his previous ones. Sleek and shifting even as Steve watches. “It tends to mess back. You’ll see.”

The universe. _The Tower, the Iron Gauntlet. Infinity stones._ The tide of memories floods him, two versions of reality warring in his head, full and distinct and clear as though it had all just happened moments ago. Fighting Thanos in Wakanda. The Snap. Five years of hell and mourning and trying to fix something that could never be put right.

_Bucky._ The memories, _real memories_ , of a lifetime spent with James Buchanan Barnes at his side and in his heart, even when they were separated by ice and the Soldier and more than half a century of time. None of it mattered, because they always, always found their way back to each other. 

Steve meets Tony’s eyes and sees the same two lifetimes worth of knowledge reflected back at him. “Did it work? Steve asks, voice rough and barely above a whisper. “Did we bring them back?”

“I don’t know, big guy. I think so? I hope so.” Tony looks around. “We sure as hell did something, because this is not how I left this place the last time I was here.”

Steve glances around, seeing Thor standing a few feet away. “Where’s Nat, and Clint? Banner?” Memories crawl to the surface, mourning Natasha, but he refuses to believe that things aren’t different this time. They _knew_ how to use the stones, they all did, and they— _he—_ had focused so hard on fixing things and keeping them all alive. He refuses to believe they might have failed. 

“I don’t know.” Tony closes his eyes briefly. “I don’t think Nat was here...the first time. But this time should be different. We have to believe they’ll turn up. Bruce and Clint were there...here...the first time. Fuck, they’re probably in this mess somewhere.” He surveys the heaps of debris that used to be the Avengers compound.

Steve’s memories fill in the gaps. _Stealing the Stones from the timeline, building a different version of the Iron Gauntlet. Bruce, Hulk-Bruce, attempting to bring back the people caught in the Snap. Clint answering the phone. “Honey. Honey—”_

“We don’t have time to search for them right now,” Steve says grimly as he catches sight of what holds Thor’s attention. “We have to believe that they’re all okay.”

Steve goes to stand next to Thor, Tony flanking him on the other side. Across the cratered ground, Thanos sits on a piece of rubble giant blade resting flat across his thighs.

“What’s he been doing?” Tony asks. He turns his head slowly, and Steve can hear the low buzz of FRIDAY’s voice reporting observations and analysis into Tony’s earpiece.

“Absolutely nothing,” Thor grunts. It takes Steve a moment to put his finger on what looks different, when he realizes that this version of Thor is heavier around the face and waist, built less like a bodybuilder and more like the images of Vikings Steve’s seen in books. Thick and solid; built to weather the storms of the world.

He hefts the shield to settle it more firmly on his arm, and realizes his other hand is empty. “Where are the Stones? The gauntlet?”

“Somewhere under all this,” Tony replies, waving a hand to indicate the destroyed compound, then indicates Thanos. “All I know is he doesn’t have them.”

Which means this is their best chance against Thanos. The monster from their nightmares. “So we keep it that way.”

“You know it’s a trap, right?” Thor grunts, steel gaze focused on the distant figure. 

Steve nods, and Tony says, “Yeah. And I don’t much care.”

“Good,” Thor states, straightening his shoulders. “As long as we are all in agreement.” He extends his arms to his sides, palms open, and with a crackle of lightning summons both his hammer and a ferocious-looking axe— _Stormbreaker_ , Steve’s memory supplies—while armour wraps around his body.

Steve’s armour is mostly intact, and Tony’s suit has already repaired the damage from the explosion that leveled the compound. They did everything they could to bring people back and set their reality back onto the right track. Now there’s nothing left to do but fight. To defeat Thanos once and for all so that he can never hurt anyone again.

“Let’s kill him properly this time,” Thor states. Steve nods, and he, Thor, and Tony march in tandem across the scarred ground toward the final confrontation, weapons at the ready and tension twisting tighter with each step.

When they’re close enough to hear him speak, Thanos sneers at them. “You could not live with your own failure, and where did that bring you? Back to me. I thought that by eliminating half of life, the other half would thrive, but you have shown me that’s impossible.” There’s rage seeping through the smugness now, the anger of an abuser denied. “As long as there are those that remember what was, there will always be those who are unable to accept what can be. They will resist.” His voice drips with disgust.

Tony glares, voice hard. “Yep. We’re all kinds of stubborn like that.”

Thanos voice smooths with fake sincerity. “I’m thankful, Stark. Because now I know what I must do.” He stands slowly, adjusting his grip on his blade and sliding his helmet onto his head. “I will shred this universe down to its last atom, and then—with the Stones you’ve collected for me, create a new one. One teeming with life, but which knows not what it has lost but only what it has been given. A grateful universe.”

“One born out of blood,” Steve says, horrified, determined to never let that happen.

Thanos shrugs as he raises his blade. “They’ll never know it, because you won’t be alive to tell them.”

Steve raises his shield, and pictures Bucky, the reason Steve fights, has always fought. _“I’m not sure I’m worth all this, Steve.”_

The response echoes in his soul. _You’re worth everything._ And Steve dives into battle once more.

***

Natasha opens her eyes to darkness and the sound of dripping water and creaking metal. She tries to sit up but something has her left hand pinned and a weight holds her down all along her left side. Her body aches everywhere, and a vicious headache pounds behind her eyes. _What the hell happened? Where am I?_

The last thing she remembers is falling… No, standing in the lab with the rest of the Avengers, except they weren’t the Avengers. Just strangers who weren’t really strangers. An Iron Man glove with the Infinity Stones being used to bring back half the universe. But that’s not right either, she wasn’t there for that part, because she jumped from the cliff on Vormir, it was the only way—

“Ugh, _fuuuuck_ ,” the weight above her groans and shifts. It gives her enough leverage to shove out from beneath—

“Clint.”

“Nat? Nat!” Clint stands and hauls her to her feet. She can barely make him out in the dim light of—are they in a sewer?—and he fumbles around for a moment before clicking on a small light and shining it at her. “Nat. Thank fuck.” He grabs her close in a tight hug, and she returns it, both hands clenching around the straps of his body armor. 

Memories come crashing back, two lives layered on one another, and she pulls back to see the same memories in Clint’s eyes. “Ah, Natasha, we did it. You died the first time, but now you’re here, so we must have fucking done it right.”

This definitely isn’t the same Clint she remembers seeing just minutes ago. Different haircut, different clothes. Tattoos visible through the tears in his body armour. So they sure as hell did something. “We have to go find the others.”

Natasha’s foot kicks something with a heavy clunk as she turns. Clint points his light toward their feet, and it reflects a rainbow back at them from the Stones in the Iron Gauntlet. As Natasha picks it up, she hears a scraping, scrambling sound from the far end of the tunnel. Clint tosses her the flashlight and draws a flare arrow from his quiver and shoots it toward the noise. As the red-orange light rushes down the dark tunnel, it illuminates the crawling approach of a horde of the alien creatures from Thanos’ army.

“Well, shit,” Clint mutters, nocking another arrow to his bow. “So much for anti-climactic. Looks like that’s our cue to leave.”

They spin and take off running down the tunnel in the opposite direction, dodging broken pipes and crumbled concrete. Clint manages to fire an exploding arrow to take down a section of the tunnel behind them. Hopefully it will be enough to buy them time to find a way out to the surface.

***

Steve grunts and rolls away from Thanos’ blade, coming back to his feet a few yards away. He hangs back to catch his breath a moment while Thor and Iron Man try some move with Thor summoning lightning through the hammer and axe and Tony funnelling the energy through the suit and aiming it at Thanos. 

But Thanos twirls his blade and deflects the energy blast, knocking Tony and Thor back. Thor follows up with a complicated move of both the axe and the hammer, and sends Mjolnir flying through to air towards Thanos, but at the last second Thanos maneuvers Tony into its path and the hammer crashes into Tony’s chest and sends him flying.

“Shit,” Steve grunts and runs toward Thanos again. He hopes Tony is okay but can’t take the time to go after him. Thanos bats Steve away almost effortlessly, goddamn, but Steve rolls back to his feet and throws himself into the fray. The next minutes are a flurry of blows from Steve and Thor until Thanos manages to get his hands on Stormbreaker and turns the axe against Thor instead. 

Steve sees Mjolnir lying on the ground, knocked out of Thor’s hands. He reaches for it instinctively, even knowing he’s too far away. Yet as he does so, he sees the hammer beginning to raise itself from the ground. A glance at Thor shows him preoccupied struggling against Thanos’ hold.

Steve looks again at Mjolnir, at his own outstretched hand. Remembers Thor’s words from a long ago party. _Whoever shall be found worthy…_

_Please_ , Steve begs. 

Then the hammer is in his hand. Lightning is crackling through his veins, and Steve is right in Thanos’ face, swinging the hammer to deal blow after blow. Throwing the shield, then the hammer, fueled by the rage at what Thanos tried to take away from him. From everyone. The words howl behind his teeth but he holds them in, knows Thanos won’t be moved by them and doesn’t deserve to see the pain Steve feels.

Thanos’ selfishness tried to take Bucky away from him. Now those unjustifiable actions would see justice. They aren’t even certain that Natasha and Clint are safe, that their attempt to reset things and bring everyone home was successful. They went straight from the attempt into the fight.

All he can do is fight, and hope. _I’ll find you, Bucky. Wherever you are, whatever it takes._

But even with the hammer, even with Thor’s lightning, Steve still isn’t a match on his own against Thanos, and one moment to the next sees Steve’s offensive advantage erode. He stumbles when Thanos slashes across his thigh, and finds himself crushed under the onslaught of Thanos’ blade hacking away at the edge of the shield. Shattering the metal and raining shards of shrapnel down on Steve. 

But seeing the destruction of the shield, the symbol of everything Steve has been for two lifetimes, only galvanizes him. 

Slowly, painfully, he gets back on his feet. 

Thanos sneers. “In all my years of conquest, and violence, and slaughter, it was never personal. But what I’m about to do to your stubborn, _annoying_ little planet…” He raises his blade, and Steve sees hoards of Outriders and Chitauri teleporting into view across the battlefield. He can see Tony in the suit to his left, sprawled out and trying to get up. Thor is crumpled against a pile of rubble to his right. Until they manage to recover, Steve’s on his own, and it’s not in him to back down.

Steve tightens the straps of the broken shield around his arm and stands as straight as his bruised body allows. “I can do this all day.” Gritting his teeth against the pain, he starts toward Thanos once more.

He’s brought up short by a loud crackling in his earpiece, followed by a beautifully familiar voice. “Hey, Cap! You read me? Cap, it’s Sam. Can you hear me?”

For the first time since opening his eyes in the ruins of the compound, Steve feels true hope. Because hearing Sam’s voice, he knows they succeeded.

Golden portals spin to life around him, and Sam’s, “On your left,” is accompanied not only by Sam himself flying through the portal nearest to Steve, but dozens, hundreds of Earth’s defenders. The other Avengers, the Wakandans, a virtual armada of spaceships, and more he doesn’t recognize. But only one person draws his eye, stepping out of the portal behind Sam.

_Bucky._

He doesn’t realize he’s spoken out loud until Bucky’s standing in front of him, close enough that Steve can see every strand of hair and every fleck of blue in his grey eyes. Smiling. _Real_. “Bucky.”

“Steve.”

Hearing Bucky’s voice, in person, finally—it’s almost enough to bring Steve to his knees. “You’re okay…”

“I’m okay,” Bucky replies, with a slight smile. “For the end of the world.”

And it’s so perfect, so Bucky, humour in the middle of a war, that Steve can’t help himself, can’t hold himself back any longer, and he steps close, pulls Bucky closer and seals their lips together in a kiss. 

He wants to spend forever in this moment, but knows he can’t, so pulls back far enough to look Bucky in the eyes. They still had a battle to fight, but in case this was the last chance… “I love you, Bucky. I lived a whole other lifetime without you, and there was nothing but pain and loneliness, and when I realized you were supposed to be there, at my side, I promised myself that when I got you back I’d make sure you knew.” 

“You sure know how to pick your moment,” Bucky laughs quietly, pressing cool metal fingers against Steve’s cheek. ”And I’ve loved you forever, Steve, even when I didn’t remember who you were. We’re gonna come back to all that.” His gaze cuts away from Steve to focus on Thanos. “But let’s deal with this asshole first, yeah?”

“‘Til the end of the line,” Steve vows, and with one last look at Bucky, turns to face Thanos.

“Touching,” Thanos mocks. “But even this army can’t save you, and _love_ ,” he spits out the word with a sneer, “certainly won’t.”

Steve gives Thanos a determined look. Raising his hand, he summons Mjolnir once again, and raises the hammer and shield together. “Avengers, assemble!”

***

Nat and Clint emerge from the ruined building, and enter into chaos. A battle rages across the debris field of what used to be the compound, alien Chitauri and Outriders against Wakandans and spacecraft and countless other fighters. 

Clint taps at his ear and finds his earpiece still working. “Cap! I’ve got Nat and the Gauntlet, what the hell do we do with it?” He digs through the pockets of his body armour and finds a second comm. Natasha takes it from him and slips it into her own ear in time to hear Steve’s voice.

“Nat, thank god,” Steve’s relieved voice crackles through the line. “Get those stones as far away from Thanos as possible.”

Banner’s voice breaks in, “No wait, we need to get them all back where they came from.”

“No way to get them back, now,” Tony says. “Thanos destroyed the quantum tunnel when he blew up my compound. And we’re back in the right reality now, so we can’t just dump them back where we found them.”

“Okay, none of that helps us now, though!” Clint shouts as he dodges an attack from an alien. He can’t use his bow while holding the gauntlet, so Natasha kills the alien, takes its blaster, and shoots two more approaching from behind..

Steve’s voice snaps over the comms again. “Try to get close to our location, but keep the gauntlet away from Thanos and his minions. If we can stick close, we can protect each other and the gauntlet until we figure out what to do.”

“Sure thing, Cap,” Clint replies, slashing at an alien with the edge of his bow. “Hey, Nat. Ready to play?”

She smirks and charges her batons. “You know I’m always ready for a party.” She beats another alien into the ground. “Let’s hit it.”

***

It’s an all-out war under the facade of playing “keep-away” and it’s all Tony can do to keep track of everyone, even with F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s help and the display inside the suit’s helmet. The comms are a flurry of voices, so many that they’re nearly indistinguishable, but he’s afraid to let FRIDAY mute anyone in case someone needs an assist. 

“Cap, on your six!” Tony blasts the repulsors at the alien running up behind Steve. “How far away are the Red Menace and Hawk Guy with that gauntlet?”

“Still pretty far out,” Steve shouts back from where he and Thor are the current onslaught against Thanos. Bucky stands braced on a nearby pile of broken concrete, rifle at his shoulder, firing shot after shot taking down Chitauri and Outriders one after another. He’s doing a good job of keeping the area clear immediately around Thanos, letting Steve and Thor fight without interruption.

Tony takes the opportunity to blast up from the ground long enough to survey the battlefield. He agrees with Steve that their best bet to protect the gauntlet is to rally all their strongest fighters around it, but the fact remains that the only way to do that ends up bringing the gauntlet far closer to Thanos than any of them would prefer. But having them all scattered across the field and each fighting outriders and Thanos’ minions alone and in pairs isn’t the best plan. They all work better together as a team, and they know it.

“Fuck.” Clints voice rasps over the comm.

“That’s not what I want to hear from you, Arrows,” Tony replies. 

Clint groans, panting for breath. “I got dog-piled by these bastards. Lost the gauntlet. That Spider-kid’s going after it.” 

“Shit.” Tony’s heart pounds in concern, and he scans the battlefield. “Kid, where you at?”

Before he has the chance to get really worried, though, he sees Parker swinging up over the heads of the fighters, gauntlet clutched tight under one arm. The next few minutes are tense with the gauntlet switching hands, good guys to bad guys and back again. Things are looking good until a shot from the ship above suddenly knocks Parker off the flying horse he caught a ride from and sends him tumbling down. 

Tony sees the kid catch himself enough to land safely, then looks up at the sound of something breaking the sound barrier in the sky above them. Thanos’ ship raises its weapons and starts firing toward whatever is approaching.

“FRIDAY, what are they firing at?” Tony can’t make out anything except a blaze of light.

_“Something just entered the upper atmosphere,”_ FRIDAY replies.

That something blasts through the center of Thanos’ ship, sending it crashing into the lake. 

“Danvers, we need an assist here,” Steve’s voice crackles over the comms again. “Tony, Nat, Clint, Banner. Keep trying to get to my location.”

Confirmations ring out from the rest of the team, and Tony scans their locations before descending back down into the battle. He sees Danvers driving her way forward with the help of Maximoff, Pepper in her armour, and a bunch of others Tony doesn’t recognize. 

They’re almost to the van—and yeah, Tony remembers this version of events now, that led to a fucking quantum van or whatever—but Thanos figures out their destination, too. Before Danvers reaches the van, Thanos destroys it with his blade. The explosion blows the surrounding fighters back in a wide arc through the air and tumbling across the ground.

Except the gauntlet goes flying through the air, too. _Shit._ Thanos sees it on the ground at the same time Tony does and heads straight for it.

Tony closes in on Thanos just as Thanos extends one giant purple hand toward the gauntlet. Tony revs the thrusters and tackles Thanos hard from the side, knocking him away. Thanos retaliates, throwing Tony aside into the dirt. He lays there stunned, unable to get up again. FRIDAY’s voice buzzes through the helmet. _“Boss? The suit’s taken a lot of damage. The nanotech is recalibrating but it’ll take a few minutes.”_

“Don’t have much of a choice,” Tony gasps out on a panting breath. He’s still struggling to get back to his feet and can only watch as Steve and Thor pile onto Thanos to try and pin him down, grabbing his arms so he can’t reach for the gauntlet, but they get flung away into the debris pile. 

With a triumphant smirk, Thanos picks up the gauntlet. 

“No no no, FRIDAY, get me everything you’ve got, _come on_ ,” Tony shouts. He’s standing, but he can’t do anything until the suit’s defenses are back at level. _Helpless, again._

A blaze of light fills his vision and suddenly Danvers is there, beating on Thanos while he’s trying to defend himself and also get the gauntlet back on his hand. But Thanos kicks her and throws her aside, too. Tony’s heart sinks as Thanos grins in vicious satisfaction and shoves his hand into the gauntlet. Roars through the gamma radiation lighting up his flesh from the gauntlet to his body. Danvers is there again, wrapped around Thanos arm and holding the gauntlet open so he can’t snap his fingers, and she’s trying to crush Thanos down into the ground but Tony’s not sure how long her advantage will hold out. 

He sees movement to his left, Steve and Thor getting back to their feet, thank god. Tinny voices sound through his damaged comms, he’s pretty sure it’s Natasha and Clint reporting their location. Tony hears Banner’s Hulk-roar nearby, or hopefully nearby, it’s hard to tell over the sounds of the battle and shit, his thoughts are rambling. Bad sign. Searching for an answer when there isn’t one. 

Then it feels like time slows down to seconds that last minutes. Steve and Thor, weapons in hand and determination on their faces, limping toward Thanos again. Natasha and Clint emerging from over half of a destroyed wall, guns blazing and aliens in pursuit. The Hulk landing in front of them, sweeping the attackers away with one swing. 

Thanos tearing the Power stone out of the gauntlet with his other fist, and punching Danvers away in a burst of purple light.

Doctor Strange, hovering above a writhing mass of fighters, meets Tony’s eyes and slowly raises one finger. The memory echoes like a bell. _I went forward in time to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict. How many did you see? Fourteen million, six hundred and five. How many did we win?_

_One._

Thanos places the Power stone back into the gauntlet and roars through the energy burst. It’s about the only distraction Tony can hope for.

“FRIDAY, send every bit of power you can to the suit’s right arm, Copycat Protocol. It doesn’t have to be pretty, just functional.” He feels the hum of the suit’s arc reactor power sharply upward, and as Thanos raises his arm again, Tony leaps.

He wraps himself around Thanos’ arm, both hands on the gauntlet pulling at it. He’s shouting at Thanos, indecipherable words, all he needs is the distraction. The nano-suit reconfigures around his arm where he’s touching the gauntlet, touching the stones. Thanos punches him hard, once, twice. _Just a few more seconds, come on—_

Searing pain fires through Tony, locking his muscles, and Thanos gives a final punch that throws Tony through the air to land hard on the ground. He loses his helmet, can’t reach it, isn’t sure it matters now. Something stops his roll and as he struggles to flip over and stand he looks up and sees the whole team, Steve and Thor, Natasha and Clint, Banner, all arrayed around him, all standing ready to attack, to defend. If Tony’s going to die then at least it’s going to be surrounded by his friends. 

He gets to his feet, half turned away from Thanos, and meets their eyes one after the other. Sees the realization dawn on all of them, sees the miniscule nods. 

Thanos laughs, triumphantly, drawing their attention, and he raises his arm with a sneer. “I am _inevitable_ .” He snaps his fingers with a hollow, metallic _clink._

Nothing happens.

Thanos’ victorious expression fades, and he looks at the gauntlet and the empty spaces where the stones have all been removed.

Tony smiles at Thanos as he turns to face the Titan head on, revealing the stones now embedded in his own suit’s hand and the arcing energy burning through his body. He raises his arm, gauntlet in front of him. Steve’s hand grabs his shoulder, Natasha and Clint join together and take Tony’s free hand. Thor and Banner on either end, hands locking tight onto Steve’s and Clint’s arms, completing the circuit. Sharing the force of the gauntlet, groaning through the pain burning through them.

“I. Am. Iron Man,” Tony states. “And we are the Avengers.”

He snaps his fingers. 

All his focus is on destroying Thanos’ army, for good this time, and he knows the other Avengers are concentrating on the same. He can’t undo every bad thing that’s happened in this version of their reality, but he can for damn sure make sure that the people he loves are safe. That the people Thanos hurt and killed are restored.

_Be specific. Be focused. Thanos and his army gone, the people they love safe._

The force of power roars from the gauntlet through Tony and out to the rest of the Avengers. Time seems to slow, and the stones glow brighter and brighter until it’s hard to look at them. Tony feels the jolt of the universe shifting to accommodate the changes the stones make. He can tell that the others feel it too. 

Steve looks at Tony, gives a decisive nod. “Send the stones back where they belong.”

Tony snaps his fingers again. Energy surges and the stones flare so brilliantly all he can see is white.

Then the power of the stones is gone and the light fades and they are standing in the centre of Thanos army watching the Chitauri and Outriders and Thanos himself dissolve into dust and blow away.

***

Steve lowers himself unsteadily to the ground, breathing hard. He catches at Tony as the other man also slumps down to his knees. The Iron Gauntlet is empty of stones, the metal charred and corroded. Tony grimaces with pain as he slowly tries to free himself from the destroyed gauntlet with the metal fingers of his other hand. 

He looks around and sees the other Avengers, panting in the dirt around him. Natasha and Clint are leaning against each other, holding each other up, dirty and disheveled but without any serious injuries. Thor and Banner seat themselves on a pile of debris.. 

All alive.

Pepper lands next to Tony, the faceplate of her armor flipping up to reveal her worried face, and the Parker kid drops down next to them. Steve steadies Tony until Pepper and Parker have him and have started trying to dismantle the gauntlet, then moves a short distance away.

Steve can see the other fighters across the battlefield slowly lowering their weapons, coming to the realization that the battle is finally over. So many familiar faces, but only one that he needs to see.

Then Bucky is there, jumping lightly down from his perch, rifle slung over his shoulder. When he reaches Steve’s side he reaches down to clasp Steve’s arm and help him to his feet, but the pain flares through Steve’s slashed leg and instead he pulls Bucky gently down to the ground at his side. He stares into Bucky’s eyes, sees the love there, and can’t help but lean in for a lingering kiss. He pulls back just far enough to lean his forehead against Bucky’s, holding him close.

“We did it,” Steve says. “We won.”

Finally, with Bucky in his arms and by his side, everything feels right.


	6. Epilogue

#  Epilogue

Steve slips out the door and across the lakehouse’s porch, walking slowly down the grassed slope leading down to the water’s edge. Stepping out onto the weathered wood dock, he makes his way to the covered seating area at the end. Settling onto one of the benches, he sits with his elbows on his knees and looks out across the water. The sky to the east is glowing orange with pre-dawn light.

It’s so quiet. Quieter than the city ever is, with the gentle lapping of the water against wood, the low hum of insects. It’s so calm that Steve struggles to reconcile this moment with the last few days, even as the quiet soothes the echoes of the battle they so recently finished. 

He shifts and stretches out his legs, feeling the lingering ache in his thigh from where Thanos slashed him. The serum healed the more minor injuries quickly enough, but deep stab wounds and broken bones always take longer. 

It’s only been two days, barely enough time to process everything that happened, and the jumbled double-layers of memories sure as hell aren’t helping.

It’s why Tony brought them all here, at least in part. Somewhere they could all put themselves back together and try to come to terms with it all. The other part of it is because, hell, where else are they supposed to go? The Avengers compound is completely destroyed, and the Tower in Manhattan is currently swarmed with media since somehow the world got wind of the Avengers’ involvement in the events of the last five years.

He snorts to himself.  _ Somehow. Hard to miss an explosive firefight complete with goddamn spaceships. _

But there aren’t any words, not yet. None of them know what to say, or how to say it. So for now, they’re hiding away from the rest of the world. All things considered, Steve figures they’ve earned a damn break.

He’s alone on the dock for a while, drifting in his thoughts, but not for long. As the sun creeps above the horizon, one by one the others drift down from the house and join him. 

Natasha is first, with Clint at her side. She leans against one of the support posts holding up the sun cover, and Clint settles cross-legged on the dock at her feet. Tony appears next, limping more than a little and with his right arm heavily bandaged and in a sling. He sits on one of the benches with a quiet groan of pain. 

Banner and Thor appear soon after Tony, taking seats against the railing and in a deck chair. Bruce carries a tray with mugs of coffee and tea in his good hand, the gauntlet-damaged one supported by a sling that matches Tony’s. Steve wraps his hands around the thick ceramic, letting the warmth sink into his skin.

Tony eventually breaks the silence. “As far as Bruce and I can tell, we did it. Everyone back where they belong. The stones back where they belong, protected or hidden.” He glances at Natasha, then up toward the house. “The important people are still here.”

“We won,” Steve says softly. It feels simultaneously unreal, and more real than anything else. They fought against impossible odds, twice, and won. 

“I still feel...out of alignment,” Clint says. “Not like before, where reality felt wrong, but just...two lives, two lifetimes worth of memories.” He rubs at his forehead, wincing when he bumps against a laceration on his temple. “It’s a lot.”

“We were a little off-script,” Tony says. “We jumped back into the right reality in the middle of events that weren’t happening where we came from, but at the same time we knew what was going on. So it was like we’re saying the wrong lines against someone else reading the right ones.”

“I guess,” Clint mutters. “Whatever it is, it’s giving me a headache.”

“That’s probably the concussion,” Natasha says with a slight teasing tone, but she also reaches down to gently move Clint’s hand away from poking at his stitches. Her fingers linger in his hair for a few moments before dropping away. Steve catches the barest hint of her sad expression before she smooths it out again.

Bruce gently sets his mug down with one oversized green hand. Adjusting his glasses, he sighs and looks around at the rest of them. “So what’s everyone going to do now?”

Tony gives a little cheers with his coffee. “Thanks to the grace of Pepper, I still have a company to run. There’s going to be…” He sighs. Shakes his head. “A lot of work, good work, that Stark Industries can do to help rebuild...everything. And that other future, the one with clean energy and abundant resources, I have to believe we can still get there. Plus let’s be real, it’s me. I couldn’t stop making tech if I tried. But…” Tony turns to look up at the house for a long moment. “I’m not giving up the family I have, that I worked so hard to save, just to make tech. Not anymore. So.” He gestures to the rest of the team. “Any of you ever feel like helping out SI, you just say the word. Pepper and I will always have a place for you. And there will always be a room in the Tower with your name on it.” He chugs back the rest of his coffee, clearly embarrassed, and Steve stifles a fond smile.

Bruce nods. “Well, I’ll probably take you up on that, Tony. Not really anywhere else for me to go. Not right now, anyway. SI will probably let me do the most good.”

‘We’ll be glad to have you, “ Tony replies. 

Natasha shifts, standing a bit straighter against the support pole. “I might try a little bit of that normal life I saw in the other reality,” she says quietly. She doesn’t look at any of them. “The memories I have now are…a mess.” She breathes out a hard exhale. “I died, the first time. Or before, however we need to define it. We did things differently, and made it so I’m still here, but I remember dying on Vormir, you know?”

Clint reaches up and takes her hand, giving it a squeeze and holding tight. 

“So I think I’ll try the new life thing, one more time. But I don’t have to remake myself this time.” She finally turns to face them, her eyes meeting Steve’s, then one by one the rest of the team, and she smiles. Her real smile. “I know who I am. I have my family back, in all of you. So, a normal life.” Then her smile shifts to her habitual slight tilt as though she’s laughing slyly inside. She shrugs carelessly. “But you can’t really take the game out of the spy, so who knows?”

Clint swings their hands through the air a little. “I’m going straight back to the farm, as soon as I can find a ride. I talked to Laura and the kids. They’re okay. Confused and scared, but okay. They want to see me. Soon as they can.” His eyes are glassy, and he presses one hand against them. Pulls his hand back to stare at his palm, the tattoos snaking up his arms. “I don’t know how to tell them about...all of this. Everything I’ve done in the last five years in this reality.” He tilts his face up to look at Natasha and tugs her hand until he can lean his cheek against it. “To tell them everything that I lived through, that I remember, in the reality where they weren’t.” 

He looks intently up at Natasha, expression serious. “And you’re coming with me, no arguments. We’re family, Nat. None of this changes that.” His expression relaxes when she doesn’t attempt to refuse. “Hell, I bet every reality with a version of us, we’re some kind of family.”

Natasha gives him one of her rare, truly genuine smiles. “You are always my family, Clint. You and Laura and the kids.” She looks at the rest of the team in turn. “And all of you are my family, too. The one I spent every lifetime searching for. I’m glad I found you again.”

They all fall quiet again, listening to the sound of birdsong and the movement of water beneath them. Finally, Tony breaks the silence. “What about you, Cap?”

Steve doesn’t answer right away. That is the question, isn’t it? The only question left. What do you do when you’ve saved the world?

He lets out a long, slow breath, because it’s not really a question at all, in the end. 

You make it the last time.

“I think I’m going to retire.” And yeah, now that the words are out there, alive, they feel nothing but right. But he does laugh, just a little. “Again. But this time, it feels like it’s gonna stick. I don’t think I have it in me to be Cap anymore, not full-time, not anymore, and it’s really… Well, you’re either in, or you’re out. Pretty hard to be a part-time superhero, and the shield, the mantle of Captain America, deserves nothing less than wholehearted effort.”

He pauses to let his words sit with the rest of the team, and even though he didn’t expect them to argue, when he searches their faces he’s still warmed to see nothing but understanding and acceptance. “I’m ready to come home from the War, the one I feel like I’ve been fighting since 1944...hell, since I was born. I’m going to go home, to Brooklyn. And there’s still so much good I can do in the world, so many things I want to do, but I don’t need to be Captain America to do it.”

“You wanna live your life, for you,” Tony says quietly. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“Besides,” Clint adds. “Did you see all those people who showed up to fight? Maybe, at least here on Earth, you were one of the first superheroes. The first Avenger. But you’re not the last. The world’s got plenty of heroes now.”

“We’re going to be okay,” Natasha says. “We’re all alive, we will always have each others’ backs. We’re not alone, anymore.”

Steve feels the last of the tension slide from his shoulders, losing the weight he’s carried for nearly a century, and he takes a deep breath. It’s easier than any he’s taken since the first time he stepped out of the Vita-Ray machine in a new body.

He feels free.

It’s a goddamn moment, which means of course Tony pipes up with the absolutely teasing tone of siblings everywhere. “Plus, we all know what you  _ really _ want to be doing with all your newfound free time.”

It takes Steve a second of confusion before he takes in Tony’s words, Natasha’s raised eyebrow and dancing eyes, and Clint’s snickering grin. Steve feels the heat of a blush across his cheeks and covers his face with one hand. He groans, but it turns into a laugh and the rest of them join in. 

“Did you think no one saw you smooching your guy in the middle of the battlefield?” Clint laughs so hard he tips halfway over onto his side.

“I really wasn’t thinking that hard about it,” Steve mutters into his palm, but he’s still laughing, too. 

“I feel it’s my duty to let you know that  _ everyone _ noticed,” Natasha teases. Steve just groans again, but after all the times she tried to set him up with someone over the years, he figures she’s earned the privilege. “And anyone who wasn’t close enough to see it first-hand has probably heard about it by now.”

Then they are all just laughing, and making half-completed comments, and it’s a release, finally, from everything of the last few days, the last few years. 

When they finally wind down, Steve feels so much better, and he can tell that the others are the same. 

Steve lets out a final soft chuckle. “Look, I’m not even going to try and deny it.” He gives Nat a pointed look. “Not that I could if I wanted to, apparently. But yeah, Bucky’s part of the reason I’m out. A big part, I’ll be honest. I remember a lifetime lived without him, and a lifetime spent trying to chase and find him, and I’m ready to just...be with him in the world. Living.” Alive, finally, because for the first time since 1944 Steve feels like the missing half of his soul has been restored.

“We’re happy for you, Steve.” Natasha steps forward to give Steve a tight hug, and he returns it just as tightly. 

“Thanks.”

The sun is fully up now, warm and bright and hopeful. Steve can hear the chatter and clatter of other people moving around inside the house, and that sounds hopeful, too.

The door bangs open and tiny footsteps thump against the ground as Morgan runs across the porch and down the hill to the dock, calling out, “Daddy!” The sombre mood had already lifted with the team’s teasing, but it’s a welcome interruption anyway. A reminder that things are really, truly okay.

She races across the wood planks to throw herself into Tony’s arms, and Tony catches her and hauls her up properly into his lap. “Daddy, you gotta come back to the house, it’s breakfast time! Everything’s ready but we’re waiting for you!”

Tony holds her close in a tight hug for a long moment, before pulling back enough to smile down at her. “Did Mommy send you down here?”

Morgan giggles and shakes her head energetically, causing her hair to flutter around her face. “Nuh-uh, she said I should leave you alone but I’m hungry and I want to have breakfast with you because you were gone for  _ days and days _ and I missed you.”

Tony grins at Morgan, then at the rest of the team. “I guess that’s our cue.” He stands, swinging Morgan up onto his hip with his good arm. “Come on up, gang. Knowing Pepper and Happy, there’s gonna be a whole spread. And we deserve to celebrate.”

Steve never thought he’d see Tony so comfortable as a father, but he’s so happy to see it. So glad that when they made things right, they were able to keep the most important parts safe.

Thor and Bruce trail Tony up to the house, followed by Natasha and Clint. Steve lingers a moment on the dock, letting the peace soak into him, before slowly making his way back up the hill. 

A glint of sunlight against metal catches Steve’s attention, no doubt deliberately, and he sees Bucky standing in the shade beneath a cluster of trees a little further along the shore of the lake. Changing direction, Steve walks along the edge of the bank and joins Bucky there. 

Bucky turns away from where he’d been watching the lake, and Steve assumes watching the group of them talking out on the dock. For a normal person, this would’ve been too far away to hear them talking, but for Bucky…

“How much did you hear?”

Bucky shrugs. “A bit. Wasn’t really trying to listen in, but you know.” He gestures to his ears, and Steve nods.

“Supersoldier hearing.”

“Yup,” Bucky says. They’re both quiet for a while, shoulder to shoulder, and it’s a comfortable quiet. But there are words that need to be said.

Bucky’s studying Steve, and he studies Bucky right back. He looks...good. Largely uninjured, grey eyes calm and curious and affectionate, and other things Steve can’t quite put a name to aside from  _ Bucky. _

Finally Bucky tips his head in the direction of the dock. “A lot more shit happened than what I can remember, didn’t it.” It’s a statement, not a question, but Steve nods anyway.

“It’s a real long story,” Steve replies. “Long enough for two lifetimes.”

“Well, it sounds like we’ve got time.” Bucky smiles, and Steve wants to trace a finger along the tiny creases at the corner of his eyes. Wants to make Bucky smile all the time, so that they’re laugh lines rather than simply a sign of the years passing. 

“What do you remember?” Steve asks.

Bucky tilts his head in thought. “Fighting in Wakanda, against Thanos’ minions and those alien space-dog creatures. Then I was in the jungle, looking for our team. For you. Saw you through the trees, and then I was waking up on the ground, still in the jungle. Managed to find Sam and Wanda, Vision and a few of the others.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “You guys were all missing, and none of us had any idea what was going on. Then the portal opened up in front of us and, well...you know the rest.”

Steve looks out across the lake again for a moment. “Yeah, that’s about the shape of it on this end of things, I guess.”

“It’s really been five years?” Bucky asks softly. 

“Five years, or a hundred.”

Huffing out an incredulous laugh, Bucky shakes his head in disbelief. “I guess that’s part of the real long story, huh?”

Steve laughs a little too. It’s all so unbelievable, if he hadn’t just lived through it. “Yup.”

“Y’know, before I woke up again in Wakanda,” Bucky starts thoughtfully, casting a sidelong glance at Steve. “I had a real strange dream.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t remember all of it,” Bucky says. “But there was you, and Peggy.” He meets Steve’s eyes, and the emotion there nearly brings Steve to his knees. “‘You take care of him, and love him fiercely.’”

_ “Bucky—.” _

“And I do, Steve. I wasn’t just saying it in the heat of battle or the shock of coming back five years late or because it might be the end of the world. I said it because it’s true.” Bucky smiles, his eyes warm and bright, and Steve can’t help himself. He pulls Bucky close and presses a swift kiss against his lips, one that he intended to be quick but which turns slow and lingering.

When he finally pulls back, Steve lets his forehead rest against Bucky’s. “I loved you when I was that scrawny kid in Brooklyn, and I loved you through a war. I loved you even though I lost you, over and over again.” He feels the warm touch of Bucky’s hand against his face and pulls back enough to see his face. “I still love you, Bucky Barnes, and now that I finally have you back, all I want is to keep loving you for the rest of our lives.”

“‘Til the end of the line,” Bucky says, and Steve feels it in his heart as the vow it’s always been.

“‘Til the end of the line.”

*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we have reached the end! Thanks to all the readers, and many thanks to the NASBB2020 mods for running an awesome event! All kinds of gratitude go to my IRL bestie LB who beta-read this fic for me right to the last second before posting. <3 Any remaining mistakes are most definitely mine.
> 
> Final huzzah for my artist bicappy, whose amazing art brought this fic to life. Thanks for being a great collab partner!


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